‘Happenstance’: Neo-Nazi Sewell says he ‘bumped into Joyce’ at casino, no formal meeting

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has angrily brushed aside questions about a chance late-night encounter he had with neo-Nazis in a Canberra casino earlier this month, which neo-Nazi leader Thomas Sewell said lasted about half an hour.

News outlet Crikey emailed Joyce asking about an allegation that he had spent two hours talking with the extremists at Canberra Casino on September 9.

Speaking to News24 on Wednesday, Joyce said he had attended the casino a fortnight ago for a social visit with a “good mate”, and was later approached by a group “unbeknownst” to him for a chat.

“After a while, I start to get a little bit worried about them because they start talking about Anglo-Celtic and immigration and stuff like that,” he said. “So I quietly make my way away. They go back to their table. Apparently, they are the … National Socialists,” Joyce said. “A bald bloke came up with a funny accent. Apparently, that was [neo-Nazi leader] Thomas Sewell.

“Now, the story that they’re running around is that I arrived with them. That’s a lie! I don’t follow the Nazi Party, but they seemed like weird dudes, and I made sure we stopped the conversation. And I went back and talked to some tradies from the Central Coast. They were a lot more sensible.”

Joyce said the meeting wasn’t organised and denounced the neo-Nazi group as disgraceful. “My family fought against the fascists, I don’t want anything to do with them at all,” he said.

Sewell – a notorious neo-Nazi who has called for a “race war” – was in Canberra last month as the High Court heard his challenge to the federal government’s extremism crackdown that outlawed his group the National Socialist Network.

Sewell confirmed to this masthead he “bumped into Joyce” and the MP’s friend “by happenstance” while he and his group were having “a few drinks in Canberra to cool off after a lengthy-two day hearing”.

“We had a private conversation that lasted approximately 30 minutes in which a number of subjects arose,” Sewell said. “I cannot divulge the details of a private conversation between two men and respect that what was said to me was not to be used as political opportunism or attention-seeking – hence I made no public brag about it.”

The day after the encounter with Joyce, Sewell posted a video on social media from outside the High Court, saying his neo-Nazi group wished to form their own party “to support One Nation in forming government”.

In recent months, Sewell has boasted to his followers online that the group has been “networking” behind the scenes in political circles to drum up support for the case. Neo-Nazis of the now-outlawed NSN have also been embroiled in a series of political stunts designed to grab headlines, including unsuccessfully gatecrashing a One Nation fundraiser in Melbourne in June.

Crikey reported on Wednesday that a witness spotted Joyce at the casino late on September 9 with Sewell and other neo-Nazis as well as their associate, far-right influencer Hugo Lennon, after the High Court hearing.

Joyce insists he did not know who Sewell and the others were when they approached him, and that hundreds of people approached him cold “all the time”. Asked by 2GB radio how he could not have known, he said: “I don’t ask for people’s business cards.”

A picture Joyce took of his dinner companion, seen by this masthead, shows a group of known neo-Nazis and their associates sitting at another table away from Joyce at the casino.

In a private livestream to followers two days after the encounter, Sewell said: “I won’t say too much, but we had a lot of patriotic encounters with people while we were in Canberra. A lot of very patriotic encounters. I would say we were extremely well received, not just in the High Court, but in Canberra.”

That same day as the livestream, Lennon confronted the speaker of the house Milton Dick outside parliament about the neo-Nazi ban. In footage of the ambush Lennon posted online, Dick declines to comment but tells Lennon: “You’re here in the home of democracy, and you have a right for your voice to be heard.”

“I think he forgot what democracy is,” Lennon wrote of the encounter.

Lennon has never been a member of the NSN but is among the wealthy backers and influencers this masthead recently unmasked helping Sewell’s neo-Nazi group plot its next move into politics. In the weeks prior to the September hearing in the High Court, he had organised far-right rallies supporting the case and was also photographed in Canberra with prominent neo-Nazi Joel Davis.

In a statement on Wednesday, Sewell said he respected “Barnaby’s right to disavow any association with controversial characters such as myself” but stressed that his neo-Nazi group, now rebranded “White Australia”, would still back One Nation.

Sewell and his lawyers are arguing in their High Court case that the neo-Nazi group is now a political party and so banning it infringes on the implied right to political freedom in Australia and gives too much power to the government.

If the court strikes down the laws, it would be a serious defeat for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s post-Bondi crackdown on hate groups and, according to Sewell, “assist the creation of a Pauline Hanson prime ministership”.

Lennon did not answer questions before deadline.