Outside Victoria’s Parliament House, Melbourne’s anti-immigration rally took a stark turn when Thomas Sewell, a New Zealand-born Australian neo-Nazi activist, told supporters that migration posed an existential threat to the nation’s future.
Sewell framed his speech in stark terms. “The China man has a nation. The Indians have a nation. We want a nation of our own. We want Australia for Australians,” he told the crowd, casting migration not as a policy issue but as an existential danger.
“People often ask me, what does it mean to be Australian,” he said. “I say it’s not a passport, it’s not a piece of paper. It’s a folk, it’s a people, it’s a people bred here.” Citizenship documents, he argued, were irrelevant. “Australia is beset on all sides by enormous” pressures, with migration framed as the central danger.
He went further, insisting that unless mass migration was stopped, “our death is certain.” The crowd’s reaction was split. Some cheered, others jeered, and many looked uneasy. Sewell’s appearance highlighted the challenge for organisers who had tried to distance themselves from extremist groups: the marches created a stage, and he seized it.
His speech leaned heavily on ethnonationalist themes, echoing “replacement” narratives that critics say are taking louder space in Australia’s immigration debate. “If we want to secure our Australia, not Parliament’s Australia, we must organise,” he told supporters. “They don’t care about your complaining. The only thing they will listen to is your organising. When you organise into groups, then they fear you. Then they attack you. Then they come after you.”
Drew Pavlou, a Brisbane-based activist, said Sewell’s intervention risked poisoning the broader debate. “Polls show 15 million Australians (55 per cent) want to lower migration. Today 50-100 evil Neo Nazi cult members infiltrated the rallies for lower migration in Sydney and Melbourne. Now the mainstream press and mainstream politicians will call all 15 million Australians who want to lower migration Nazis. Which is exactly what the Nazis want.”
For critics, the speech showed how Saturday’s rallies mixed legitimate frustration with calculated attempts to normalise extremist rhetoric. One attendee, who asked not to be named, said: “These rallies will grow. Today shows they feel emboldened, even if many booed them. This is how it starts, and politicians should be taking note.”
Mainstream leaders have condemned extremism in general but avoided addressing Sewell directly. He closed with a line that revealed the core of his appeal: that housing pressures and neighbourhood change are being driven by immigration. “You must form groups,” he told the crowd. “They don’t care if you’re complaining. They ignore you. The people that are hurting this country, the people that are destroying it, the people that have caused your suffering, the people pushing us out of housing, the people pushing us out of our neighbourhoods—they don’t care. The only thing they will listen to is your organising.”
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