National Action

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National Action (founded Anzac Day, 1982) was an Australian political party that was said to be on the far-right of the political spectrum. It had no representatives in any Australian parliament, at either state or national level. Its ideology dictated that it remain outside the "political system".

Its policies included the deportation of asylum seekers and the termination of Aboriginal native title. For this reason, National Action was alleged to be racist and xenophobic. National Action also espoused theories that a New World Order is taking over the world and must be stopped. They were accused of being a neo-nazi party as its "chairman" James Saleam Ph.D. was a member of the Australian Nazi party in the 1970s. National Action claimed, however, that it was a "National Bolshevik" party. Saleam claimed that the party was led collectively.

National Action was a fringe group that never obtained a popular following for a number of possible reasons:

its use of terrorism and intimidation against perceived enemies and rival "racial-nationalists";
Saleam's conviction for insurance fraud in 1988;
the public peception that it was a criminal gang; and
its plans to fire-bomb a political rival's home and to murder anti-Apartheid activist Eddie Funde.

Saleam was imprisoned in 1991 for the plot against Funde.

In the mid-1990s, the success of the right wing One Nation Party led many National Action members to join One Nation to promote a broad far-right, anti-immigration agenda within the party. The subsequent implosion of One Nation (which was partially due to Saleam's machinations to take over One Nation) stymied this plan.

In recent years, attempts have been made to resurrect the party by Michael Brander, a rival of Saleam. These plans have had little impact due to the loss of Dr. Saleam's credibility amongst ex-members and other "racial-nationalists", many of whom had been attacked physically or slandered by Saleam. Saleam is often said by rivals on the racial right to be of part Lebanese origin, an allegation which he has denied on many occasions. The violent background of Brander, convicted and fined $3000 for assaulting an Asian opponent with a flagpole in 1995, [1] caused renewed controversy in 2005 when Brander's work was published in the government-funded monthly magazine Quadrant. Brander's appearance there was denounced by federal Labor parliamentarian Michael Danby (Danby's condemnation was quoted by Australian Jewish News on March 18, 2005 and by The American Conservative on June 5, 2006). Meanwhile Saleam has published online his doctoral thesis [2], an elaborate coverage of the alliances and enmities within extreme-rightist Australian movements over recent decades.

National Action co-founder David Greason's book, I was a Teenage Fascist, tells of Greason's own time within the Australian neo-Nazi movement and the events behind the founding of National Action.