00:00Well, Brandon Coshill appeared on a video link in a virtual court from just behind me
00:06at the Surrey Hills Police Station.
00:08Now he attended a March for Australia event at Moore Park in Sydney yesterday where he
00:12made some comments on a stage at an open mic session.
00:16And as a result of the comments he made, he's now facing one charge of inciting hatred on
00:21the grounds of race, causing fear.
00:23Now that charge is a relatively new offence in New South Wales, it carries a maximum penalty
00:27of two years behind bars.
00:30But today, Mr Coshill applied for bail.
00:32The police prosecutor opposed that release and cited risks including the endangering of
00:39community safety and also the risk of committing further offences.
00:43The prosecutor told the court that this is a strong prosecution case because of the public
00:47nature of the comments that were made and he said the speech had far greater reach than
00:53just those thousands of people that were in the crowd because it was potentially disseminated
00:57on YouTube and X as well.
01:00The prosecutor also described this speech as a brazen incitement against the Jewish community.
01:06But Mr Coshill's lawyer argued for him to be freed on bail by saying that he has a limited
01:11criminal history.
01:12It goes back some nine years or more and doesn't involve anything like hate speech offences.
01:17She proposed conditions including regular reporting to police stations and also a ban on attending
01:23public events.
01:24But ultimately, the magistrate Daniel Covington denied bail saying it appeared to be a strong
01:29case.
01:30It also appeared, he said, that this was a serious example of this type of alleged offence.
01:35So the police prosecutor raised this as an issue.
01:38He cited the alleged police facts in court and said preliminary investigations have suggested
01:44that Mr Coshill was at this event or has known associations with other NSN members.
01:51That's the National Socialist Network, a neo-Nazi group which has recently disbanded.
01:55Now the prosecutor also said that there is open source information that suggests some kind
02:02of link.
02:03And he also referred to the actual comments that Mr Coshill made as also supporting that
02:08as an allegation.
02:09But Mr Coshill's lawyer said that that group, as I mentioned, has disbanded recently.
02:15She said there's no allegation of an ongoing affiliation with any active group.
02:20And she also suggested that the court could impose some kind of condition on him to mitigate
02:26any risk.
02:27But that also factored into the magistrate's decision to deny a bail.
02:31He said that it was very difficult to come up with a condition that could mitigate that
02:35kind of risk because there was no evidence of, for example, specific names or any way to
02:41mitigate that, which would feed into some kind of non-association order that would reduce
02:45that risk.
02:47So that was part of the reason why Brandon Coshill was also denied bail today.
02:51He remains in custody behind us here and his case returns to court on February the 3rd
02:56in a week's time.
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