Confronting footage has emerged of protesters storming an Indigenous camp in Melbourne after Sunday’s “March for Australia” rallies.

Video circulating online shows a group of men wearing black attacking people at Camp Sovereignty, at Kings Domain.

The group reportedly included members of the National Socialist Network – leader Thomas Sewell among them.

Four people were injured in the incident after the group arrived at the camp about 5pm on Sunday. Two were hospitalised with severe head injuries.

The footage shows the men tearing down an Aboriginal flag and chanting, “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi oi, oi”. Those at Camp Sovereignty responded with “always was, always will be, Aboriginal land”.

“Please just leave,” a woman can be heard calling out.

“Stop fighting… stop fighting, please.”

Camp Sovereignty was  first created in 2006 to coincide with the Commonwealth Games and re-established in 2024. It is a burial site with the remains of Indigenous people from 38 clans.

Organisers said Sunday’s attack was unprovoked.

“They came armed with poles to attack a group of predominantly women at a peace camp,” co-founder Keiran Stewart-Assheton told the ABC.

The group said police did not arrive until the men had already moved on. No arrests were made.

However, Victoria Police said the men were moved on after they formed a line and assaulted various members of the other group with sticks and flag poles. Police are investigating.

Victoria’s Deputy Premier, Ben Carroll, said it was an appalling attack on First Nations people.

“Do these people even understand the definition of Indigenous? It means first, it means native,” Carroll said on Monday.

“Our Aboriginal people have been here for 65,000 years. We’re all immigrants. This was their land and we need to respect that.”

Black-clad men throw punches and kicks in a violent attack on an Aboriginal protest camp. Photo: AAP

Police Minister Anthony Carbines said the men went to the camp intending to cause trouble and described their behaviour as disgraceful.

“Police will be investigating those matters and will also be in contact with members of Camp Sovereignty as well as other First Nations people who are deeply upset and distressed with that activity yesterday,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne on Monday.

“This is what happens … when you have bullies in the community who roam in packs to intimidate others.

“It’s gutless and it needs to be called out.”

Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe, whose uncle Robbie Thorpe established the camp, wants the attack investigated as a hate crime.

“The aim of this attack was to cause fear and terror in the hearts and minds of our people,” the Gunai and Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung woman said.

There was more condemnation on Monday of Sunday’s anti-immigration rallies that drew tens of thousands of marchers across the country.

Speakers and attendees were at pains to state they were not against immigrants and wanted the federal government to pause or slow the pace of immigration.

But some of the rhetoric crossed into racism and xenophobia, with one speaker in Sydney spouting a theory about “a clear global agenda to shame, beat down and replace people with Anglo-Celtic and European heritage”.

Prominent neo-Nazis also spoke in Sydney, where NSW Police estimated 15,000 people attended. Sewell was among the speakers in Melbourne.

On Monday, federal Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly said people had legitimate concerns around the strains immigration was placing on housing and infrastructure.

But the protests were clearly targeted at migrants from “countries that have brown people”, not white Western countries.

“It’s very clear from the conduct, that was observed at these marches, that these marches were a con by the far right neo-Nazis to prey on some legitimate concerns around housing and around cost of living in order to propagate their anti-immigration, racist agenda,” she told ABC radio on Monday.

“One of the very clear calls to action that was listed there was anti-Indian immigration, against people coming from India.

“That, to me, is clearly racist when you target a specific ethnicity, that is clearly racism.”

Ahead of Sunday’s marches, organisers frequently repeated a claim that 1500 migrants were entering Australia each day, based on Australian Bureau of Statistics overseas arrivals and departures data.

The bureau has said the figures are not a reliable measure of migration or population change, but rather represent self-declared traveller intentions.

Former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said successive governments had failed to communicate their immigration plans to the public, leaving a void to be filled by conspiracy theories and “bizarre ideas”.

The Albanese government is yet to release its planning levels for its 2025/26 migration program, which Rizvi said was an “unprecedented delay”.

Opposition immigration spokesman Paul Scarr said it was important that fringe elements didn’t get a foothold in the immigration debate.

“Last Monday in the Senate, I gave a very strong speech in relation to the targeting of our Indian community, and I was dismayed at some of the material, and members of our Indian community were really distressed,” he told ABC radio.

But “huge increases” in net overseas migration in the first two years of the Albanese government had distorted the debate, Scarr said.

Elijah Buol, chair of the Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland, said it was deeply concerning that people of migrant descent considered themselves “the sole custodians of Australian identity while at the same time rejecting the efforts to recognise First Nations [people]”.

-with AAP