When neo-Nazi leader Thomas Sewell appeared last week in a Melbourne court for a bail hearing, after jail time over the attack on an Indigenous camp, his supporters were there in force.

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A lawyer in the building at the time reports how intimidating the security staff and others found the very presence of these men, dressed in their signature black clothing.

Earlier this month, footage of about 60 black-clad men outside the New South Wales Parliament sent a chill through many Australians, certainly those with a sense of history.

The demonstrators had an anti-Semitic banner (Abolish the Jewish Lobby) and chanted the Hitler Youth slogan "blood and honour".

Among officialdom, the rally has had a galvanising effect. The federal government this week took one of the demonstrators, South African Matthew Gruter, into immigration detention, readying to deport him.

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Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says he is having continuous conversations with agencies to ensure federal laws are adequate to deal with the neo-Nazis.

The NSW Labor government introduced legislation "to ban conduct which indicates support for Nazi ideology by invoking imagery or characteristics associated with Nazism". NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley said in a statement that while the state already banned Nazi symbols, "the disgraceful rally outside the Parliament [...] highlighted the need to strengthen current laws".

The move is controversial. NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Timothy Roberts had already said "you do not fight fascists with laws that erode civil liberties".

In a speech early this month, ASIO boss Mike Burgess highlighted the threat, and challenge, the neo-Nazis are posing.

Burgess said that currently there were "multiple, cascading and intersecting threats" to Australia's social cohesion. These were "fuelled by three distinct but connected cohorts: the aggrieved, the opportunistic, and the cunning".

He put the neo-Nazis into the "opportunistic" category, pointing to how they had attempted to leverage the anti-immigration marches.

"The biggest neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network - or........

© Canberra Times