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The federal government has cancelled the visa of a British man charged with displaying prohibited Nazi symbols, after police seized swords bearing “swastika symbology” from his Queensland home last month.
Federal police announced earlier this month that a 43-year-old United Kingdom citizen living in Queensland had been charged with three counts of allegedly displaying prohibited Nazi symbols, and one count of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence.
The AFP alleged in a statement on 8 December that the man used social media platform X to display a Nazi symbol and “espouse a pro-Nazi ideology with a specific hatred of the Jewish community, and to advocate for violence towards this community.”
In the statement, police alleged that during a search of a Caboolture home on 21 November, they found “several weapons, including swords bearing swastika symbology, axes and knives.”
“The AFP has alleged the man posted content that violated Commonwealth law on several occasions between 10 October, 2025, and 5 November, 2025. It is alleged X blocked the main account the man was using, which lead him to create a second handle with a similar name to continue posting offensive, harmful and targeted content,” the AFP said at the time.
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Home affairs minister, Tony Burke, confirmed on Wednesday that the man’s visa had been cancelled and the government was seeking his deportation.
“I said some time ago that as far as freedom of speech was concerned, I had no time for hatred when it came to cancelling visas. If you come to Australia on a visa, you are here as a guest,” Burke told the ABC.
“Almost everyone on a visa is a good guest and a welcome guest in our country. But if someone comes here for the purposes of hate, they can leave. And that’s what we’re doing.”
Burke said proposed new hate speech legislation would increase his powers to make such visa cancellations, adding: “My view is an incitement of hate should be enough … we should be able to cancel visas on that basis alone.”
The visa cancellation comes after Burke last month revoked the visa of South African Matthew Gruter, after his attendance at a neo-Nazi National Socialist Network rally outside New South Wales parliament in November. Burke at the time accused NSN members of seeking to cloak their “bigotry in patriotism”. Gruter later left Australia voluntarily, after being taken into immigration detention and facing deportation.
Burke on Tuesday said he wants to shut down Islamist and far-right extremists like the NSN with a new regime for listing hate groups, which would operate nearly identically to the terror listing scheme.
