Australian Government Urged To Do More About Tackling Threat Of Right-Wing Extremism

The Australian government is being called on to do more to stop right-wing extremism growing in the country.

The campaign has gathered pace since an Aboriginal woman was subjected to a race hate attack by a man with a swastika on his forehead in Perth.

Police allege the man used a makeshift flamethrower to injure the woman and yelled racist obscenities.

Federal Greens' First Nations spokeswoman Lidia Thorpe reckons more work needs to be done to stamp out violent extremist views in Australia.

"When politicians and prominent public figures spend years encouraging and amplifying the politics of hate, the inevitable outcome is violence," she said.

Linda Burney, federal Labor's spokeswoman for Indigenous Australians, added: "The racially motivated attack on a First Nations woman is another instance of a disconcerting trend in right-wing extremism and white supremacy in Australia.

"We cannot brush this aside or be complacent."

While Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton called the attack 'disturbing' and said it 'had no place in our society', there wasn't anything committed or promised to help fix it.

Australia's spy agency has warned that violent white extremism has become a much larger concern for them over the past few years.

In a submission to Federal Parliament's joint committee on intelligence and security, ASIO said the threat of violence coming from the fringes on the right have shot up ever since the Christchurch terror attack in 2019.

"ASIO remains concerned with the threat posed by small groups or lone actors inspired to conduct an attack. These threats are difficult to detect, and can emerge with little forewarning," they said.

It comes also after a group of neo-Nazis gathered in Victoria's Grampians before Australia Day this year and held a KKK-style rally that included Hitler salutes and the burning of a cross.

There might be some who ask whether extremism in general is being looked at and the spy agency revealed threats coming from the far-left aren't that concerning.

"Left-wing extremism is the support for violence to achieve political outcomes relating to ideologies including, but not limited to, anarchism, for example," ASIO said.

"Left-wing extremism is not currently prominent in Australia, although there are several overseas groups who attract individuals adhering to an extreme left-wing ideology."

Meantime, police in Western Australia are fighting tooth and nail to find the man responsible for the Gosnells shopping centre attack.

They've appealed for anyone with information to come forward and politicians are hoping the incident will inspire change.

Federal MP, Labor's Matt Keogh, told Parliament: "It's not OK for this cowardly, atrocious and unprovoked attack to occur in my community, it's not okay that it happened in this country, it's not OK that it happened at all."

"[Australia's domestic spy agency] ASIO says far-right terrorism is an enduring threat that is real and growing, but like many things this Government is just burying its head in the sand."

Featured Image Credit: Western Australia Police Force

Topics: Australia

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie