Steve Price: The Project host erupts at ‘weasel’ Premier after sickening scenes are allowed to play out in iconic country town as cops stand by and do nothing
Steve Price has taken aim at Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, accusing her of using “weasel words” to avoid responsibility for allowing masked neo-Nazis to march brazenly down a city's main street.
The Project host also slammed Victoria Police for surveilling the menacing group of 30 black-clad men in Ballarat, 115 kilometers northwest of Melbourne, on Sunday had watched and even guided men.
His angry comments during Tuesday night's episode came after footage of the meeting was shown, along with Ms Allan's reaction.
While Ms Allan said “what we saw in Ballarat was really disgraceful behaviour”, she defended the lack of police action to stop the march.
“We also live in a society where there is freedom of association, the right to peacefully assemble and to stand up for a cause that is important to our functioning as a society and therefore it is important to maintain balance,” she said . .
Price exploded at the idea.
“I think those were very bad words from Prime Minister Jacinta Allan,” Price said.
“She should have had her police minister say to the Victoria Police Commissioner that you cannot allow people to walk down the street completely covered in masks.
“The police should have stopped those guys on that street in Ballarat and demanded they unmask or they would have been arrested.”
Fellow The Project presenter Hamish Macdonald asked what laws Price would change to stop such a demonstration.
Price pointed out that anti-cycling laws, which are in place at varying levels in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, ban people from associating with each other while wearing the biker gang colours.
“This is worse than that,” Price said of the neo-Nazi march.
“These people are despicable. And the police should be a police force, they are weak.
“We had those same Victorian police firing rubber bullets at anti-vaxxer protests and using riot shields. Then why do they let these guys get away with this?'
During Victoria's draconian Covid lockdowns in September 2021, police fired rubber bullets at protesters gathered at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan comes under fire for police leniency shown to neo-Nazi protesters
Price said laws introduced in Victoria earlier this year that would make it a criminal offense to give the Nazi salute, display a swastika or say “Heil Hitler” were “clearly not working”.
The protesters, who at one point took photographs of themselves outside the Ballarat police station, used the legally safe chant of “Heil victory”..
As they walked through Ballarat's central Sturt St behind a banner reading 'Australia for the white man', they also chanted: 'The rest can go'.
The group sang Rule Britannia as they marched and were seen taking photos at Ballarat's Eureka monument.
As the scene unfolded, police provided an escort and directed traffic.
Price was not the only critic of the government and police to take an apparently lenient attitude toward the march.
A neo-Nazi group has brazenly marched through the center of the Victorian city of Ballarat
The chairman of the Anit-Defamation Commission, Dvir Abramovich, said such a demonstration of hatred without “legal consequences” caused fear in the Jewish community.
“What you ignore, you reinforce,” he said.
“These neo-Nazis are encouraged and empowered by this inaction.
'A democracy is not just about the rights we have, but also about what we are willing to tolerate.
“What does it say about a state that is willing to tolerate modern Nazis?”
Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt blamed soft laws for tying officers' hands.
“Only thugs wear balaclavas on the streets of big cities,” he said.
'If it were up to us it would be completely illegal, you couldn't do it, but it's not.
“It's up to the governments and up to them to decide whether they want this to happen.”
Victoria Police has been contacted for comment.