Police have seized art posters from a Canberra music venue and bar that depict world leaders and others, including Donald Trump and Elon Musk, wearing Nazi uniforms, and are investigating whether new federal hate symbol laws were broken.
David Howe, the owner of Dissent Cafe and Bar in Canberra’s CBD, said his venue was shut down for about two hours on Wednesday night as police investigated a complaint about hate imagery relating to five posters in the window.
“I think it’s ludicrous to be perfectly honest,” he told Guardian Australia, describing the works as an “anti-fascist statement” and noting the shut down had caused the cancellation of an interstate band’s performance.
By Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours later, the posters were placed back in the windows, with the contents covered with the word “CENSORED” in red. Howe said he hoped patrons appreciated their return, describing them “absolutely” as protest art.
The posters, by protest artist group Grow Up Art, depicted various world leaders including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; the Russian president, Vladimir Putin; and the US president, Donald Trump, in Nazi uniforms.
In a statement, ACT policing confirmed it had declared the cafe a crime scene. The five posters were seized and would be investigated to determine whether charges would be laid under hate symbols laws, it said.
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“ACT Policing remains committed to ensuring that alleged antisemitic, racist and hate incidents are addressed promptly and thoroughly and when possible criminality is identified, ACT Policing will not hesitate to take appropriate action,” the statement said.
The ACT government’s police minister, Marisa Paterson, said she had heard the community concern about the venue’s shutdown and was seeking “further clarification about the circumstances surrounding the events that took place”.
Guardian Australia understands it is the first complaint about alleged hate imagery received in the nation’s capital following laws passed earlier this year in the wake of the Bondi shooting.
About 20 people had gathered at the venue at about 7.15pm when three police officers showed up, Howe said.
“I was, at first, quite shocked. I mean, I couldn’t quite believe that they were … these are artistic works,” he said.
“No one was to touch the posters until they’d been removed by the police.”
The police statement said they “had a discussion with the owner, with officers seeking to remove the posters as part of their investigation into the matter”, but the owner declined, leading police to declare the venue a crime scene.
Howe disputed this claim: “If they had specifically asked me to remove the posters, I would have simply taken the posters down.”
Howe was told to wait for a serious crimes unit to arrive from Gungahlin, around a 25-minute drive, to remove the posters. The police left after 9pm, he said.
Under laws passed in January, hate symbol display offences don’t apply if it’s deemed for a religious, academic, educational, artistic, literary or scientific purpose and not contrary to the public interest.
“[The posters] are an anti-fascist statement. It speaks to authoritarian regimes around the world. Police states are just symptomatic of that,” Howe said.
The federal ACT senator David Pocock said art is a “legitimate form of political dissent” and it was important police protected against hate and prohibited symbols while also “permitting peaceful protest”.
The federal Greens justice spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said federal hate symbol laws were being weaponised against “people who use their conscience to speak out for humanity”.
“Pauline Hanson can spend decades demonising Muslims in the Senate and the media but stick ‘punch a Nazi’ on your wall in Canberra and the AFP comes knocking,” he said.
“Laws rushed through parliament to fight antisemitism are now being used to attack people fighting fascism. These laws were never seriously about hate, they have always been about shutting down dissent.”
The ACT independent MLA Thomas Emerson said he’d written to the ACT police minister on Thursday morning to ask why the legislation’s exemptions for artistic purposes hadn’t been applied in this instance.
“This seems pretty Orwellian to me,” Emerson said.
“In attempting to foster social harmony by preventing offence, we can’t afford to create more division. Government suppression of artistic expression and dissenting voices is incredibly divisive.”
• This story was amended on 19 February 2026. An earlier version stated hate symbol display offences don’t apply if a symbol in question runs contrary to public interest. This should have stated the offences don’t apply as long as the symbol does not run contrary to public interest.
