From ze Age: And yes, we get a couple of mentions.
White supremacists hide in quiet suburbs
December 18, 2005The shadowy far-right may be behind Sydney’s race riots. But where are they? William Birnbauer and Claire Miller track them down in outer Melbourne.
POST offices don’t get any more ordinary-looking than the glass-fronted Australia Post shop in leafy outer-suburban Croydon. A corridor runs the length of the shop and there is a row of post office boxes along one wall. That’s where you will find Box 223. It looks like every other box in every other post office. But it’s not, because Box 223 is the hub of radical, right-wing racist activity in Victoria.
PO Box 223, Croydon, is listed on the Melbourne website of the Australia First Party, which mobilised supporters to last week’s violent “reclaim the beach” riots at Sydney’s Cronulla.
The same box last year was a contact point for the Eureka Freedom Commemoration, a gathering in Ballarat to which members of all “patriotic groups and independent patriots” were welcomed.
Anti-hate groups say it is also used by the Patriotic Youth League, which has been linked to neo-Nazis and racist attacks in NSW. Spokesman Luke Connors recently predicted racial violence in Melbourne’s suburbs.
Matthew Collins, a former chairman of the UK National Front before changing sides to investigate and expose ultra-nationalist groups, recalls that the Croydon post office box was once used by National Action. “They are finished now but they were prominent in the 1980s and ’90s,” he said.
Finding out who rents this box is difficult because in the shadowy world of extreme right-wing politics, media are seen as the enemy, front groups are common and conspiracy theories about “internationalists who would destroy Australia’s way of life” abound.
The Sunday Age found that the radical groups involved in the Cronulla riots are present in Victoria. However, their membership is limited and they have failed to attract support. A key activity appears to be slagging off other groups and foes such as the anti-racist group Fight dem back! on blog sites in language that most would find difficult to understand: “Darpo-Nutzism: David Palmer Joins On The ‘Darp’ Web Site To Attack Australian Patriots: Amidst Palmer’s Lies, Many Truths” reads one headline.
Deep conspiracy theories, local and international, about various alleged persecutions, state-paid provocateurs and smears are expounded at tiresome length on websites.
Diane Teasdale, the Shepparton-based, “acceptable face” of Australia First, believes the Cronulla riots were “set up” by anonymous government figures so that tougher policing powers could be introduced. She said: “I believe it is possible from what I’ve seen in the last few days that people within government or people in authority possibly have helped set this up to get police powers that otherwise Australians would not accept … therefore it has paid off,” she said. Asked who was involved, she said: “Someone. Just someone.”
Post Office Box 223 is on an Australia First website that calls for the introduction of citizen- initiated referendums and decries what it calls Australia’s “immigration-driven ‘trinket sale’ type economy”. A mobile number listed on the site is answered by a man who says he doesn’t do phone interviews. What type of interviews does he do?
None.
Why not?
Because the story will be a beat-up he says, hanging up.
Australia First’s Dr Jim Saleam, who was jailed for three years in 1991 for organising a shotgun attack on the home of an African National Congress representative, also maintains he does not know who operates Box 223. This is despite his being key speaker at the Eureka meeting last year for which participants were asked to register by writing to Box 223.
Australia First’s Queensland representative, John Drew, hung up immediately after being told he was talking to a journalist.
Mrs Teasdale confirmed the box was used by “some of our Victorian members” but would not name names. She suggested that it was shared by different groups to save money. Mrs Teasdale said Australia First’s members included people who belonged to the Patriotic Youth League — a group reportedly associated with white supremacists including Volkfront. Mrs Teasdale said of league members: “The ones that I’ve met I’ve found to be quite nice young men.”
A spokesman for anti-racist group Fight dem back! said he believed that the spokesman for the Patriotic Youth League, Luke Connors, lived in Eltham, which is west of Croydon. Mr Connors has not been answering his mobile phone since he was quoted in The Age last week anticipating local racial violence. He has claimed the league has 100 members nationally and branches in Ascot Vale and Eltham.
The Australia First Party was founded by former Labor MHR Graeme Campbell in 1996 and several candidates stood at the 1998 election, but the party has not contested the past two federal elections.
Mrs Teasdale, who recently polled 4 per cent of the vote in elections for the Shepparton council, said the party had not been active in recent years but she intended to register it soon and run candidates at the next poll. She would not say how many members the party had.
Her view of the Cronulla riots? “From what I understand of the Cronulla incident, there was an element there of young Lebanese who were causing trouble and it got to the point, I understand, where the young Aussie blokes … were quite frankly pissed off and decided it was time to reclaim their beach.
“I think they were sick of their girlfriends being sneered at, things being said to them and what have you. I can sympathise with that.”
Dr Saleam, who handed out stickers and leaflets at Cronulla, was equally dismissive. “It’s not alcohol, it’s not louts, and it’s got no real outside impetus, particularly the shibboleth called neo-Nazis. It was purely and totally a massively spontaneous event,” he said.
