AUSTRALIA identified a neonazi network as the second organisation being banned under its new law criminalising hate groups and support for them.

The group, formerly known as the National Socialist Network and sometimes called White Australia, said it would disband after the government in January passed the law allowing certain organisations to be banned.

The law was in response to the antisemitic attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December in which 15 people were killed.

The National Socialist Network “changed their name, but didn’t change the fact that they were still an organisation and were still engaging in the same sort of behaviour that met the thresholds for this legislation,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters in Canberra on Friday.

The ban, which would take effect at the end of Friday, makes it illegal to support, fund, train, recruit, join or direct the group, including if it reformed under a new name, Mr Burke said. Breaking the law is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The group Hizb ut-Tahrir was in March the first group banned under the hate speech law. That organisation and the National Socialist Network were publicly identified by lawmakers and officials as the policy’s primary targets.