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- [00:01]
A
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. Last month the federal government announced that the biggest Neo Nazi organization in the country would be listed as a hate group. A few days ago, the Age revealed the group's former leader, Thomas Sewell, has been living in a $2.5 million estate in Melbourne suburbs. So what are Sewell's plans for the compound? And who are the wealthy backers making it possible today? Crime reporter at the Age, Sharon Grotch on the Neo Nazis next move. It's Wednesday, june 10th. Sharon, you've been reporting for some time now on Thomas Sewell, who is the the Neo Nazi who's currently on bail ahead of the the trial of the alleged attack on Camp Sovereignty last year. You've recently been where he's been living. So tell me what you found.
- [01:05]
B
Well, late last year, I heard a rumour that Sewall and his Neo Nazi group, the National Socialist Network, had been gifted a property in Victoria. They've been trying to get land for a while to start a white compound so they can train and start building their white ethnostate. But I didn't expect to find a mansion. It's a multimillion dollar property in the state's northeast. It's many, many acres. There's a pool, there's a gym, there's more than 10 bedrooms. Of course, none of this is in Sewall's own name. He's been blacklisted by most banks these days. It was actually bought for him through a shell company owned by a wealthy National Socialist Network member who had until now kept a pretty low profile. And speaking to my sources and digging into it a bit more, I realised there's quite a few other Neo Nazis living at the property with Sewall and his family too. Obviously none of the Nazis he is banned from associating with under his bail conditions because he's still to face court over the alleged attack on an indigenous camp in Melbourne last year. But it's definitely become a new base for the movement. This house.
- [02:20]
A
Ok, so you said the house was bought through a shell company. Tell me about how you actually connected it to Sulbin.
- [02:26]
B
Well, I started looking at real estate listings, believe it or not. Once I had that tip to what had been sold recently, I was looking at a much lower price point, to be honest. Saul started bragging about the property on his live streams to followers, saying, you know, it's about 40 minutes from the city, dropping a few little clues. He was then spotted in a few suburbs sort of nearby. And that helped me Narrow it down. But then I got another tip and that really unlocked things. That was the name of the shell company which had bought the house. So when I looked into the guy that owned that, he was a man named Martin Featherstone. He had millions of dollars in property, two really big mansions just minutes away from each other in the same suburb. And so I went out there and locals had told me they had seen some of the Nazis around. And then Sewell's Nazi group actually filed some paperwork which had the address of the compound listed so I could finally confirm it last month. I didn't have to do a door knock after all, thank God.
- [03:32]
A
And so tell me more then about Martin Featherstone, the man who actually owns the property. Who is he?
- [03:40]
B
Yeah, so Marty Featherstone, he hadn't really been on our radar before. He's the son of a wealthy family who run a multimillion dollar trucking business in Melbourne. They sold that fairly recently and he's become a really wealthy man. He didn't end up coming back to me and my questions. Sadly, I would have loved to have heard more of his story, but certainly he calls himself a white nationalist, a proud racist. He's been out with the nsn, marching at recent March for Australia rallies that they helped organise. He posts some pretty extreme things, including about pushing parliaments to the sword and bashing people of colour. And he says that he can speak out for Sewell's group because he can't be cancelled or fired the way other neo Nazis in the group have when they've been unmasked. So when I went back through some of the photos we took, because we actually got a tip in January about where the NSN was holding its final Nazi training session back when they claimed to have disbanded. And I found him there in the pictures, right next to Sewell. There he was. And the interesting thing was that he was wearing the white wristband that denotes long term membership of the nsn. And when I spoke to some sources, they told me, oh yeah, Marty's a proper member. So that started to kind of join a few dots for me then.
- [05:02]
A
Okay, and so before we go any further. So the Neo Nazi group that SULE used to run, it's supposed to have been outlawed. Now it's listed as a prohibited hate group. They have said that they disbanded. And yet there appears to be this level of organisation happening here when it comes to this property. So tell me your understanding of the legal position here.
- [05:24]
B
Yeah, so the government banned the NSN and its political offshoot Wide Australia last month under the new extremism crackdown. And they designated them as a hate group instead of a full blown terror group. But anyone found to be a member or supporting them financially or recruiting for them, you can face up to 15 years in jail. They're really tough laws. The group actually tried to get ahead of these laws and claimed to disband in Jan, but the government said, look, they're just phoenixing under new names and forms and we have reported on that as well. They're still very much active neo Nazis, but I guess what our investigation has uncovered is that their ecosystem and their network is bigger than we realise. They're holding assets and companies in other people's names through wealthy associates and some of their less high profile members. But I guess while some experts say, look, the government needs to just follow the money, go after them the way they go after organised crime, it's actually pretty tricky for the authorities to seize this. I mean, even under the new laws, because, you know, you can still own property. And as we've now discovered, Nazis can be millionaires. And if it's legitimate money, it's legitimate money.
- [06:41]
A
Still to come, the all white compound Sewell is hoping to build on the property. Sharon, tell me a bit more about what you've come to understand about what Saul is trying to build here with this land, this property and the money that appears to be coming in.
- [07:05]
B
Yeah, so this idea of a white homestead is straight out of the white supremacist playbook and Saul has been trying to get one for years like his mates in the United States. It's a base for them to train members in fighting in their ideology. So Hitler worship, planning for their, you know, mass deportations of people of colour and priority has been given to men with families. Whereas the younger guys are still kind of cycling through the share houses that they own around the state and interstate through sympathetic landlords and middlemen. But Saul isn't really stopping here. He wants to buy a pub actually outright. And the idea is really to create a place where they can survive these bands, they can survive public scrutiny, prosecution. I guess experts are saying to me now that they've actually got the compound that they've been wanting to get for years. They worry this means they've entered a dangerous new phase where they'll feel more emboldened and they'll really start hunkering down. And as one US expert said to me, Matt Kreiner, when Nazis hunker down in compounds, it's a big red flag.
- [08:18]
A
And so who else is in this network around Sewell beyond Martin Petherstone.
- [08:24]
B
Yeah. So Sewell, a lot of his rich mates, they've got both money and influence. So there was Marty Featherstone, obviously, but there was also a guy called David Roberts. He's the son of a wealthy family in aviation and gun dealing in regional Victoria. There's also a guy called Mitch Hobbs. He's a young stockbroker and far right influencer. He goes by the name Sir Doug online and he's a close friend, collaborator of Hugo Lennon, the property development heir and influencer. And he confirmed that he and Hugo Lennon have been traveling around the US meeting with MAGA influencers and also this neo Nazi looks maxer guy. And Lennon's been spruiking Saul to some pretty deep pocketed conservatives over there saying he's a household name, he's a big deal in Australian politics, kind of building that momentum around him. There's also a guy, he's a wealthy friend of Andrew Tate, he is the manfluencer and former porn star Sterling Cooper. I sort of figured out he was helping Sewell artificially inflate his reach online using the kind of propaganda clips and tactics that Tate had used to artificially inflate his own reach online. Okay.
- [09:44]
A
And the group has been trying to present themselves as a legitimate political organisation. Part of that is the High Court challenge that is underway to the Australian government's hate speech laws. So where is that challenge at?
- [09:57]
B
So they've sort of learned from their mates in the uk, in Germany, who were banned by governments there. And what they're trying to do is create a political party, they call it White Australia, as a way to shield themselves from the law by claiming, look, everything we do is political expression. So that's the motivation behind the High Court challenge. They're claiming you can't disband as we're a political party. And there is precedent for this. But interestingly, it comes from one of their ideological enemies, the Communist Party of Australia, who the Menzies government tried to ban in the 50s during the Cold War panic. And the High Court overturned that and reinstated them. So they're sort of relying on that kind of defence at the High Court. And Sewell's raised a bit of a war chest for this. $150,000 in a few days for the legal fight. He's actually reopened that fundraiser just over the weekend so he can hire even more lawyers.
- [10:55]
A
What are the chances of success for them here?
- [10:58]
B
Well, they don't have a terrible case, to be honest, because there's kind of two fronts they can fight this on. The first thing they can do is say that the laws were rushed through, they're overstepping, they give the minister too much power, they're draconian and they'll have unintended consequences. And look, a lot of experts do agree with them. I mean, the other big front they're gonna fight this on is they're going to claim that they're already a political party. And so because of that Communist Party precedent, they can't be banned. So the AEC told me they can still register as a political party even though they're now outlawed as a hate group, which is an interesting little loophole they mentioned that the government might want to fix. But they can still actually be recognised as a political party. Without AEC registration, the court can easily find there's still a party and they're claiming that because they incorporated as an association, they are already a party.
- [11:55]
A
It all goes to this bigger question, I suppose, about how should authorities respond when a movement seeks legitimacy through political participation while maintaining links to extremist ideology and networks?
- [12:08]
B
Yeah, exactly. And look, this has been done before in other parts of the world. And these guys, you know, they follow that really closely. They're looking at what happened, say, in Germany, where the Nazi groups were forced underground. So they created a semi legitimate political party, but it had this underground, militant, unofficial neo Nazi wing that kept running, kept doing activism. So it's certainly a tricky problem for lawmakers because they also have to defend freedom of thought. The other problem for some experts is they wish that the government had just banned them outright as a terror group under the existing legislation, rather than creating this whole new category. Cause they said, look, you know, it's been revealed they had ties to terrorists. They've been involved in violence before, like the scenes we saw at Camp Sovereignty just last year. Just outlaw them that way. Don't create this whole new precedent which could really open a can of worms legally and catch a other people. We don't want to. The other side of all of this, I should say, is that there has been this crackdown, but there hasn't been much talk about proper funding and support for de radicalization programs. Because a lot of these Nazis, as we know, they're teenagers, they're targeting really young boys. Some of them are neurodivergent, they're struggling with things like social isolation. They might have autism, adhd, they might have serious mental health issues. And now with this new white compound that Sewell's finally managed to get himself, experts like the White Rose society, their anti fascist researchers. They were telling me look, this is the perfect place now for Sewell to really perfect his cult like model and really exert even more control over followers. So de radicalization is more important than ever.
- [14:03]
A
Sharon, thank you so much for your time.
- [14:06]
B
Thank you so much, Ruby.
- [14:19]
A
Also in the news, senators at an inquiry into the NDIS overhaul have been told not to pass the bill in its current form. Advocates say it represents dangerous changes impacting the lives of people with disability, some of which will push more families into crisis. The government's overhaul is seeking to slash $35 billion from the program by removing more than 240,000 participants. And in some rare good news for mortgage holders, some economists say the next interest rate move will be down, not up. NAB's chief economist, who had initially predicted another interest rate rise in August, has changed her tune because of a sharper than expected economic slowdown. But the interest rate cut isn't tipped to happen until next year. I'm Ruby Jones. This is 7:00am thanks for listening.