The New South Wales speaker says he asked parliamentary security to relocate Saturday’s neo-Nazi rally but was told his request to move it from the front of the building was not possible.
Greg Piper, the house speaker in NSW’s Legislative Assembly, told Guardian Australia a member of his staff advised him about the planned rally late on Friday afternoon.
But the independent MP for Lake Macquarie said he was told his request to move the planned protest away from the front of parliament – made to the parliament’s internal security rather than police – could not be facilitated.
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Piper’s revelation, first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, comes after the NSW premier, Chris Minns, and the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, again fronted media on Monday, but were unable to answer questions about where responsibility lay for the decision to allow the rally to go ahead.
The premier, police commissioner, and the police minister, Yasmin Catley, have all said they did not know about the rally before it took place.
“It seemed quite evident to me that this should not go on outside the parliament, but we were told there was nothing that could be done,” Piper told the Herald.
“Most people would assume this would have gone up the chain to the premier. If I knew, so should he. [So] to say this is a failure of communication is an understatement. This is a failure to be politically attuned to the implications of something like this.”
Lanyon has blamed an “internal communication error” for allowing a form 1 application for the protest to be approved by local police area command.
On Monday, the Herald reproduced what it said was a copy of a form 1 application for the protest approved by police, naming the applicant as Jack Eltis, “on behalf of White Australia, formerly the National Socialist Network”.
The application, dated 27 October, said a proposed banner would read “Abolish the Jewish Lobby”. The application also said the group was protesting new hate speech laws, claiming they “had been driven by misleading claims and undue pressure from various Jewish advocacy groups”.
NSW police would not comment on the document’s authenticity.
Lanyon told the ABC the NSW police had received an application for the rally on 28 October, but it wasn’t raised directly with him.
Lanyon said police had sought legal advice regarding the banner.
The application was approved after police chose not to oppose it within seven days.
Speaking on ABC’s 7.30 program on Monday, Lanyon said he was “disappointed” he wasn’t briefed on the form 1 application given it was “high profile”.
“I want to make sure that I’m certainly over those matters of significance,” he said.
Lanyon said there was “nothing there” in the application that indicated there was a risk to public safety if the protest went ahead and he was “satisfied” that the appropriate process was followed.
But he said if he had been briefed, he would have asked to see if there were sufficient grounds to object to the protest in the supreme court.
Questions over who knew about protest
Piper said his staff member was originally informed about the protest by the parliamentary security service itself. Asked if the premier’s staff received a similar warning, Minns’ office deferred to the premier’s previous comments.
A spokesperson for the NSW parliament said they could not comment on security matters.
On Monday, the premier told the reporters the decision to allow Saturday’s rally “obviously didn’t go to my office”.
He said a review into Saturday’s rally, as well as another by the same group outside parliament in June, “would look at what communication took place between police and the premier’s department and the premier’s office”.
“I don’t know whether an errant email in the scores of communications referenced either of the rallies in the previous month. We’ll have a closer look at that.”
Piper said after he was told his request to move the protest was not achievable, he asked additional security personnel, including special constables, to be on-site during the rally. “I just asked if they could make sure if there were people around,” he said.
More than 60 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network stood in formation on Macquarie Street outside on Saturday morning, bearing a large banner that read “Abolish the Jewish Lobby”.
Piper said he saw the rally being allowed to go ahead as a “failure”.
“We are a democratic society. This group can parade within reason, they can protest, as others do … but I don’t think the parliament should be acquiescent to such a hate group.”
“They’ve completely been successful in what they set out to do,” he said.
“They’ve created these images of themselves in front of the most important building representing democracy in NSW, and the oldest public building in Australia, with a very ugly message.
“I’m looking forward to discussing it further to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.”
