A retiree has apologised for wearing a swastika T-shirt outside the anti-Semitism royal commission.
Ian Minus was approached by police on May 6 while wearing a shirt showing a Star of David surrounded by a swastika, with the words: “Anti-Semitism. Proud to be accused. SPEAK UP!”
The 68-year-old was outside the building as Jewish students and school staff gave evidence to the commission about anti-Semitic bullying in the classroom.
Minus pleaded guilty to knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol without a reasonable excuse and faced Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court on Thursday to be sentenced.
“I acknowledge what I did was thoughtless, harmful and insensitive,” the retired security professional wrote in a letter of apology to the court.
“I made a serious mistake.”
He wore the T-shirt - which he designed and printed - to draw attention to what he viewed as a genocide in Gaza, but acknowledged the mode of his protest was “fundamentally wrong”.
"I believe you can demonstrate about things in our community ... but we must do so in a way that doesn’t harm or cause pain to others,” the 68-year-old wrote.
“I significantly failed in that way ... and for that I am sorry.”
While the decision to wear the T-shirt was not impulsive, wearing it near the royal commission was unplanned, Minus's barrister Philip Strickland SC said.
He had been at a nearby cafe when he saw the assembled media and approached, according to an agreed statement of facts.
When speaking to police outside the commission venue, the facts state he claimed his T-shirt was “better than the fellow in Bondi".
That was an apparent reference to December's Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which 15 people were killed and 35 others injured in an attack targeting a small Jewish festival.
Mr Strickland emphasised his client had no criminal history or anti-Semitic ties and had shown contrition for his actions.
He pushed for the retiree to receive a good behaviour bond without a conviction.
But the prosecutor argued for a stronger penalty and conviction as an appropriate means of condemnation.
Judge Michael Allen accepted Minus had not been motivated by anti-Semitic views or hatred, noting it was an “unsophisticated way of protesting” his views in a “most inappropriate and insensitive way”.
But he grappled with meeting community expectations for penalising anti-Semitic conduct.
“No one giving evidence at the royal commission and no one who was on that beach at Bondi on that Sunday afternoon is any more responsible for those atrocities (in Gaza) than anyone in that courtroom,” Judge Allen said.
While the judge accepted Minus had genuine insight into the impact of his offending on the Jewish community reeling from the “unspeakable horrors” of the Holocaust, he found conviction was the only appropriate penalty.
Minus was also fined $1500.
The day Minus was arrested, the royal commission heard about students performing Nazi salutes towards a Jewish student in class while studying novel The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, based on the Holocaust.
Teacher's aide Blake Shaw also described anti-Semitic abuse directed at 11-year-olds by older students during an excursion to Melbourne Museum in July 2025.
