melbourne’s street art dispute over the Bondi shooter posters has moved beyond walls and into a broader challenge to the meaning of Australian identity, with far-right influencer Hugo Lennon, known online as Auspill, launching his own poster project while directly attacking the artist whose work he claims to be interrogating.
After taking responsibility for the posters that depicted the Bondi shooter with the word “Aussie” beneath the image, Lennon released a video defending the campaign as satire and cultural critique. In that video, he turned his attention to Peter Drew, whose long-running “Aussie” poster series inspired the visual style.
“Your art hangs in the offices of bureaucrats of various government offices. You are a bootlicker. They call us right wingers bootlickers, but you are the bootlicker,” Lennon said.
The attack marked a shift in tone from provocation aimed at institutions to a personal denunciation of Drew, whose work has been embraced by galleries, councils and government departments. Drew has previously condemned the Bondi shooter posters as “just hate”, saying they failed the basic test of what art should do.
‘Your art hangs in the offices of bureaucrats of various government offices. You are a bootlicker. They call us right winger bootlickers, but you are the bootlicker’
Lennon’s response has been to formalise his own project. A new website, aussieposter.com, has gone live, presenting the campaign as an independent Melbourne-made operation. The site states that all posters are “made, designed and shipped from Melbourne”, printed on high-quality poster paper with a halftone effect, and hand signed by “AUSPILL and Sir Doug”.
The launch reframes what began as an overnight street stunt into a sustained campaign. Where Drew’s original posters used early 20th century photographs of migrants and minorities to argue that Australian identity has always been diverse, Lennon says his work is designed to test and expose what he sees as the contradictions of that message. In his video, he argues that if the label “Aussie” can be applied universally, it becomes hollow, and that pushing the idea to extremes reveals its limits.
At the heart of the argument is a sharper claim about belonging. Lennon suggests that contemporary uses of “Aussie” detach the term from what he views as its historical core, which he links to an Anglo-Saxon identity. By appropriating the same aesthetic and applying it to criminals and mass killers, he says he is forcing a confrontation with what remains of national meaning once history, culture and ethnicity are stripped away.
Critics reject that framing outright. Jewish community leaders have described the Bondi shooter posters as “psychological terrorism”, arguing that invoking perpetrators so soon after the attack retraumatises victims and survivors. Melbourne’s Lord Mayor labelled the posters “sick”, while the City of Melbourne confirmed staff removed around 40 of them across the CBD and inner suburbs.
Victoria Police has said it is continuing to investigate the stunt, reviewing CCTV and considering offences related to bill posting. Premier Jacinta Allan has indicated she will seek advice on whether the posters breached Victoria’s hate laws.
Media reporting has also placed Lennon within a wider far-right ecosystem. Investigations have linked him to organisers of the March for Australia rallies and to figures associated with extremist networks, connections he has not denied when questioned. Lennon, however, has framed the backlash itself as proof that his critique has landed, pointing to the speed of removals and the strength of condemnation as evidence of what he calls selective tolerance.
By launching a dedicated platform and selling signed posters, Lennon has shifted the dispute from a transient street intervention to a cultural and political project. The fight is no longer only about whether the Bondi shooter posters were art or hate, but about who gets to define “Aussie”, and whether that definition belongs to institutions, artists, or those seeking to tear it down.
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