A 38-year-old Shepparton man pleaded guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to two counts of intentionally displaying a Nazi symbol and failing to answer bail.
A police prosecutor told the court the man painted a large Nazi symbol out the front of the Shepparton Law Courts on High St using a can of orange spray paint on September 20, 2023.
Not long afterwards, he painted another Nazi symbol using the same spray paint at the entry of the Shepparton Police Station on Welsford St.
The court heard he ran away from police when they asked him to stop.
Police found him with the spray paint can and with orange paint on his boots.
He told police “you’re all working for a Nazi corporation” and “1942 is going to happen again” during an interview.
The man’s defence solicitor Anthony Coote said his client had just lost his licence for drink-driving, gotten a ticket for riding his bike without a helmet and lost his job recently before the offending.
Mr Coote said the offending was out of character for his client, who was “drunk as a tong” and “having a bit of a rant about things that have gone wrong” when he was “caught orange-handed”.
Magistrate Simon Zebrowski said the man painting the Nazi symbol out the front of the police station was “a bit muddled”.
However, he acknowledged the man had recently been through a “rough trot” and had lashed out at authorities in a “not particularly subtle way”.
The man was placed on an adjourned undertaking without conviction to be of good behaviour for 12 months.
It has been an offence to intentionally display a Nazi symbol in public or public view since December 29, 2022.
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