SYDNEY - Australia's center-left government condemned an anti-immigration rally being held in Sydney on Sunday, which it said sought to spread hate and had links to neo-Nazis.

The March For Australia rally in the country's most populous city was one of several anti-immigration demonstrations scheduled for state and regional capitals across the country, according to the group's website.

"Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together," it says. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do "what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration".

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Australia, where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas, has been grappling with a rise in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis.

"We absolutely condemn the March For Australia Rally that's going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony," Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News television, when asked about the Sydney rally.

"We don't support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community," Watt said, asserting they were "organised and promoted" by neo-Nazi groups.

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March for Australia organisers did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the neo-Nazi claims.

Some 5,000 to 8,000 people had assembled for the Sydney rally, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.

A counter-rally by the Refugee Action Coalition, a community activist organisation, took place near the Sydney march. “Our event shows the depth of disgust and anger about the far right agenda of March For Australia", a coalition spokesperson said in a statement. Organisers said hundreds attended the event.

A large March For Australia rally was underway in central Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, ABC aerial footage showed.

Veteran lawmaker Bob Katter threatened a reporter at a press conference on Thursday when the topic of his attendance at a March for Australia was being discussed. The founder of the small, populist Katter's Australian Party, shook his fist and said he had previously punched people for mentioning his Lebanese heritage.

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On Sunday, Katter was attending a March For Australia rally in Queensland, a party spokesperson said.

Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect in Australia this year in response to a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023