An Australian far-right extremist has walked out of a Melbourne court on bail after being sentenced to one month in jail for performing an illegal Nazi salute.
Last month Jacob Hersant, 25, became the first Victorian convicted of intentionally performing the salute in public.
Less than an hour after being sentenced by the magistrate Brett Sonnet on Friday morning, he was granted appeal bail.
Hersant’s defence laywer, Timothy Smartt, said his client would appeal against the conviction and sentence to the county court.
Sonnet agreed to allow bail on the condition Hersant did not leave Australia, and said he must reside at a set address.
Shortly after 11.30am Hersant, dressed in a navy blue suit, walked out of the Melbourne magistrates court flanked by his fellow neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell.
Sonnet said he considered the one month’s jail sentence to be “relatively lenient”. The maximum penalty for the crime is 12 months’ imprisonment and/or a fine of $24,000.
The judge said Hersant had taken advantage of the media, who captured the gesture on video outside court, to promote his beliefs.
Sonnet said Hersant’s salute was “clearly racist” and offensive to First Nations Australians, Jewish people and non-white Australians.
“The white man is not superior to any other race of people,” he said.
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Sonnet said Hersant uttering “Australia for the white man” after he performed the salute sought to promote white supremacy and elevated the seriousness of the offence. Hersant’s gesture was “inherent to Nazi ideology”, the magistrate said.
“This court denounces Nazi ideology in absolute terms,” he said.
Before the sentence was handed down, Smartt said if his client were imprisoned it would be the “most crushing” sentence for performing the salute handed down so far in Australia. He pointed to previous convictions in New South Wales of people who had performed the salute and received fines.
He said his client’s non-violent act “does not justify sending a 25-year-old to prison”.
After sentencing, Hersant was accompanied out of the courtroom by security guard.
The court was previously shown a video of Hersant raising his arm to salute in front of journalists and camera crews outside the Victorian county court in October last year – days after Victorian laws banning the gesture came into effect.
He was then captured saying “nearly did it – it’s illegal now” and “Australia for the white man, heil Hitler”, before walking away.
During a pre-sentencing hearing last month, Smartt told the court Hersant was a family man, the full-time carer of his two-year-old son, and a far better person than the behaviour demonstrated in the video.
He argued that Hersant was a young person who was on track towards rehabilitation, arguing that the offending was at the lower end of the seriousness and a $1,500 fine was appropriate.
But the prosecutor, Daniel Gurvich KC, urged Sonnet to impose jail time and said the salute vilified minority groups. He said Hersant’s behaviour had been “calculated” and aimed to achieve “maximum impact”.
