Exemptions for educational purposes are also likely, she adds.
The proposed swastika ban is one of dozens of recommendations contained in the Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections report tabled on March 3 after two years of hearings and deliberations. It is designed to “allow Victoria Police to immediately remove Nazi symbols that are on deliberate display to vilify targeted communities”.
The move follows a spate of incidents in which police found themselves powerless to act in the face of deliberate provocations, including: the flying of a Nazi flag above a home in Beulah in Victoria’s north-west in January 2020; the tying of a Nazi flag, conjoined with Chinese flags, to a mobile phone tower in Kyabram in April 2020; a gathering of a far-right group in the Grampians in January, where Nazi salutes and chants of “sieg heil” were directed at bystanders; and a man walking through Moorabbin Wholesale Farmers Fresh Market while wearing a swastika on his sleeve in February.
In all instances, police were powerless to act because displaying Nazi symbols, while clearly designed to intimidate and arguably intended to incite hatred, is not illegal. That will change if recommendation 24 of the report – urging the government to “establish a criminal offence that prohibits the display of symbols of Nazi ideology, including the Nazi swastika, with considered exceptions to the prohibition” – becomes law (it is unlikely to become illegal to own swastika flags or other Nazi symbols).
Though clearly well intentioned, the proposal does raise the possibility of unintended consequences, depending on how exemptions are managed.