The New South Wales speaker says he knew about Saturday’s neo-Nazi rally outside parliament the day before it took place, but was told his request to relocate the protest from the front of the building was not possible.
Greg Piper, the house speaker in NSW’s Legislative Assembly, told Guardian Australia a member of his staff advised him about the planned rally late on Friday afternoon.
But the independent MP for Lake Macquarie said he was told his request to move the planned protest away from the front of parliament – made to the parliament’s internal security rather than police – could not be facilitated.
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Piper’s revelation, first reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, comes after the NSW premier, Chris Minns, and the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, again fronted media on Monday, but were unable to answer questions about where responsibility lay for the decision to allow the rally to go ahead.
“It seemed quite evident to me that this should not go on outside the parliament, but we were told there was nothing that could be done,” Piper told the SMH.
“Most people would assume this would have gone up the chain to the premier. If I knew, so should he. [So] to say this is a failure of communication is an understatement. This is a failure to be politically attuned to the implications of something like this.”
Lanyon has blamed an “internal communication error” for allowing a form 1 application for the protest to be approved by local police area command.
Piper said his staff member was originally informed about the protest by the parliamentary security service itself. Asked if the premier’s staff received a similar warning, Minns’ office deferred to the premier’s previous comments.
On Monday, the premier told the reporters the decision to allow Saturday’s rally “obviously didn’t go to my office”.
He said a review into Saturday’s rally, as well as another by the same group outside parliament in June, “would look at what communication took place between police and the premier’s department and the premier’s office.”
“I don’t know whether an errant email in the scores of communications referenced either of the rallies in the previous month. We’ll have a closer look at that.”
The premier, police commissioner, and the police minister, Yasmin Catley, have all said they did not know about the rally before it took place.
Piper said after he was told his request to move the protest was not achievable, he asked additional security personnel, including special constables, to be on site during the rally. “I just asked if they could make sure if there were people around,” he said.
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More than 60 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network stood in formation on Macquarie Street outside on Saturday morning, bearing a large banner that read “Abolish the Jewish Lobby”.
Piper said he saw the rally being allowed to go ahead as a “failure”.
“We are a democratic society. This group can parade within reason, they can protest, as others do … but I don’t think the parliament should be acquiescent to such a hate group.”
“They’ve completely been successful in what they set out to do,” he said.
“They’ve created these images of themselves in front of the most important building representing democracy in NSW, and the oldest public building in Australia, with a very ugly message.
“I’m looking forward to discussing it further to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.”
