Supporting, joining or funding the group the neo-Nazi organisation White Australia is illegal from today, with penalties of up to 15 years in prison.

White Australia is the second group to be outlawed in Australia under anti-hate legislation after the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir was banned in March.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the listing would prevent some of the “horrific, bigoted” rallies that have been held around the country.

He says the group, previously known as the National Socialist Network and the European Australian Movement, cannot evade the law by changing names.

The government changed the group’s status after receiving advice from spy agency ASIO.

Tony Burke says the ban will stop the group from holding “bigoted rallies”. Photo: AAP

“None of this will stop bigoted people from having horrific ideologies,” Burke said, “but it does prevent this group from organising, from meeting, and prevents some of the sorts of horrific bigoted rallies that we’ve seen around our country.”

“It sends a clear message to people who believe in racial supremacy that their views have no place in Australia.

“We’re a country that judges you on who you are, not on where you’re from.”

Burke said he was first advised in April that White Australia would likely meet the threshold to be listed.

The group had “phoenixed” and changed its name to avoid scrutiny, but still had many of the same members and carried out the same activities, he said.

A specific violent spat in Melbourne, along with threats and a flurry of arrests, contributed to its ban, Burke said.

The organisation was allegedly involved in an attack on a sacred First Nations site in Melbourne in August.

Its leader Thomas Sewell in March pleaded not guilty to five charges relating to the incident, including violent disorder, affray and unlawful assault.

Elsewhere, neo-Nazis organised by the group protested outside the NSW parliament in November.

The laws caused the disbandment of the National Socialist Network and its allied groups in January.

Burke said he would not be surprised if there was a legal challenge, but remained confident of the government’s position.

“It hasn’t happened yet, it still might. But you have to, in this particular portfolio, work on the basis that it’s always likely there’ll be a legal challenge,” he said.

Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam welcomed the decision.

“Let’s be absolutely clear, the modus operandi of these neo-Nazis is to destroy the Australian way of life,” he said in a statement.

“Australians do not want to see people avoid justice simply by tearing down a banner and re-emerging under a different name.”

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said the council had been calling for the measure since 2021.

“It doesn’t matter what they call themselves, or how they structure themselves, these groups use all the well-known techniques of thuggery and menace that Nazis have always used against Jewish communities and other groups they have targeted,” he said.

-with AAP