Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country on Sunday which the government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis.

March for Australia rallies against immigration were held in Sydney and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group's website.

"Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together," the website says. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do "what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration."

The group also says it is concerned about culture, wages, traffic, housing and water supply, environmental destruction, infrastructure, hospitals, crime and loss of community.

Australia - where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas - has been grappling with a rise in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis.

"We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that's going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony," Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News, who was asked about the rally in Sydney, the country's most-populous city.

"We don't support rallies that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community," Watt said, asserting they were "organized and promoted" by neo-Nazi groups.

Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia this year in response to a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023.

(Cover: A view of Sydney, Australia, August 31, 2025. /VCG)