Victoria ‘Invasion Day’ rallies take place outside Parliament house; Share the Spirit festival to be held at Treasury Gardens
March for Australian promoter Hugo Lennon tells 3AW he’s excited for the “big day” ahead.
“I hope it will be one of the biggest Australia Days in recent years, or at least one of the public demonstrations on Australia Day,” said Lennon, a known associate of neo-Nazis from the disbanded National Socialist Network, which helped organize the rallies.
“The march to Australia at previous events was a call to end mass migration,” he said. “The message is much the same this time, but we also confirm it on our national day.
“We’ll be meeting (at Flinders Street Station) at lunchtime. I think that’s a pretty big headache for the police. “There are two diametrically opposed groups meeting in the city, but we worked very closely with them and made sure we didn’t run into the other group.
Lennon said the last two marches organized by the group “went smoothly” but that protesters were subjected to “extreme violence” from the opposing side.
“We are here to celebrate. We have our own message to send, we are not interested in fighting in the street. We will take any instructions from the police that will reduce the possibility of violence against us.
“This would be a nightmare (for the police). There’s already so much going on in the city that I’d imagine they’d be pretty thin on the ground today.”
When asked about reports that police would be out today wearing helmets and protective gear, Lennon said he was worried.
“This worries me because what we saw in Australia last March: we had a group of extremists throwing rocks, glass, urine and various missiles at the police. A police line was formed between us and them, and so all these bullets were aimed at us.”
“What we do is celebrate. We affirm.” [that] We are Australia. We’re done with some kind of guilt politics. We are here today to take a very clear stance against this. “The majority of Australians support Australia Day on 26 January and this is under threat.”
