00:02Experts and faith leaders are today debating ways to combat the threat of right-wing extremism.
00:07The issue is going under the microscope in a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry.
00:12Reporter Gavin Coote is following it and is with me in the studio now.
00:15Hi Gavin. So why is this inquiry focusing on this issue?
00:19Well Ros, there's been rising concern about right-wing extremism.
00:23It's been cited by both state and federal authorities as a cause for concern.
00:28But the catalyst for this particular inquiry was scenes we saw outside New South Wales Parliament back in November
00:34where a group of neo-Nazis under the banner of the National Socialist Network
00:39out the front of Parliament with some rather offensive and provocative slogans.
00:45That led to a debate about how police should respond to these sorts of neo-Nazi and right-wing extremist
00:52organisations.
00:54The government proposed some new laws which would give police the powers to force people to identify themselves,
01:00take their masks off on face coverings.
01:02That has now been taken to a parliamentary committee, the Committee on Law and Safety,
01:08and that is underway at the moment hearing from experts and faith leaders.
01:11And what have we heard from faith leaders so far today?
01:14Well, it's been interesting. There's been a mixture of opinions from Jewish leaders.
01:18We've heard general support for the idea of more laws, particularly when it comes to protecting Jewish people.
01:25Of course, anti-Semitism, we saw those messages from those neo-Nazis,
01:30but from some other right-wing extremist groups, anti-Semitism has been a real, I guess, strain of their messaging.
01:38But the Jewish leaders made the point that this isn't just a right-wing issue.
01:42They want far-left extremism also to come under the same sort of scrutiny.
01:48We heard from faith leaders, other Christian faith leaders, the Australian Christian Lobby and the Anglican Church.
01:55They made some interesting points around the need for using existing laws.
02:00They argue you don't need more laws.
02:02You could have used existing laws to police things like these neo-Nazi groups.
02:06Of course, this National Socialist Network that has now said it disbanded last month in relation to or in response
02:14to other laws
02:15that have been brought in at the federal level, we heard from experts saying that these groups often say they've
02:21disbanded,
02:22but then they rebrand or they reband under new banners, which makes it quite difficult, really,
02:28to sort of follow their movements, monitor and target and combat what they're doing.
02:33So there have been calls from some quarters for more legal tools to combat that, as well as more educational
02:41tools as well.
02:42Thanks, Gavin.
02:43Thanks, Roz.
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