Nazi symbolism painted on a boat parked at Lake Macquarie was disgusting, racist and designed to be highly offensive, a judge has found.
Jake Dearie, 33, was handed a jail sentence in Newcastle District Court on Friday, September 11, of one year and nine months after pleading guilty to causing a prohibited Nazi symbol to be displayed in public.
Judge Roy Ellis ordered Dearie be released from custody next week with time served since his arrest in December. He will remain on a recognizance release order, with a requirement to be of good behaviour, for a year.
"I regret what I did," Dearie said in court.
Dearie and his partner Ashleigh Wilkins, 34, who will face court next week to receive a sentence date for her involvement, organised a custom decal for a boat that included the words "Jew slayer" and an image of Adolf Hitler shouting "Get Das Jews".
A number of mulloway, commonly referred to as "jewfish", could be seen swimming away from Hitler in the image and the boat had a large reversed swastika near the bow.
The boat offended members of the public almost immediately when it was parked on Albert Street at Swansea and police were notified on December 6.
Dearie was arrested on December 16, two days after an anti-Semitic terrorist attack and mass shooting at Bondi Beach.
Judge Ellis said the timing of the decal before the Bondi massacre was "obviously quite inappropriate".
He said the boat was not directly related to the attack but it was an example of why the government had introduced certain legislation.
"It is disgusting for racist material of this type to be publicly displayed with its only purpose to generate racism in the community," he said.
Judge Ellis said depictions like those on the boat decal targeted Jewish people and could generate more examples of violence.
Commonwealth prosecutor Danielle New had submitted the couple had orchestrated the "message designed to insult and offend" in a way that they purported to be "funny".
"It is not funny ... it was inescapably designed to offend, insult and was harmful," she said.
Ms New said they had tried to circumvent the obvious illegality by reversing the swastika symbol.
The court heard details of Dearie's subjective case. He was facing domestic violence charges at the time of his arrest in December but had not been to prison before.
