NDIS screening in question following worker’s ties to neo-Nazi group

Questions have been raised about how an Australian man with neo-Nazi ties passed an NDIS screening check to allow him to work with vulnerable people.

Questions have been raised about how Stuart Von Moger passed an NDIS screening check to allow him to worth vulnerable people. Picture: Supplied

A simple Google search would have revealed Stuart von Moger’s links with white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups, but he still passed an NDIS screening check allowing him to work with vulnerable people.

The company that employed him following clearance by the Worker Screening Unit said it only discovered the former army reservist’s ties to people with extremist views after some of his comments – including only wanting to work with young males – raised red flags.

When his new boss Googled his name it brought up a list of links connecting Mr von Moger with members of the National Socialist Network and the now defunct Antipodean Resistance and The Lads Society.

Mr von Moger’s lawyer said his client had “never been and is not a member of a right wing extremist organisation. Any suggestion he was or is a member of a right wing extremist organisation is false, untrue and defamatory”.

Jacob Hersant and Stuart von Moger on a camping trip to Mt Terrible in 2018. Picture: Supplied

Anti-fascist researchers from the White Rose Society said it had a file on Mr von Moger which included photos of him on a 2018 camping trip to Mount Terrible in Victoria, with members of the Lads Society and Antipodean Resistance, which was celebrated on social media as #whitepeopleweekend.

In one weblink, the 33-year-old was pictured at the opening night of the Lads Society clubhouse in NSW, on April 20, 2018, Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Among the attendees were Blair Cottrell, a high-profile far right nationalist and former United Patriots Front leader, and Thomas Sewell, a neo-Nazi who was jailed after attacking a group of Victorian bushwalkers who crossed paths with him and a group of far right nationalists all dressed in black.

Thomas Sewell, a white nationalist who punched a security guard outside Channel Nine's Docklands studio in 2021, walking out of the Melbourne Magistrates court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

In 2021 police alleged in court that Sewell was the national leader of the European Australian Movement and that Sewell’s associate and co-defendant Jacob Hersant, who Mr von Moger was pictured with at Mount Terrible, was the head of the National Socialist Network.

Mr von Moger was also in a photo with alt-right Canadian activist and YouTube vlogger Lauren Southern where he made a hand sign similar to that used by white supremacists – an OK sign with the three other fingers forming the letter ‘W’ for ‘White’.

Southern toured Australia in 2018, arriving in Brisbane wearing a T-shirt which said, “It’s okay to be white”.

Blair Cottrell, Thomas Sewell, Stuart von Moger, pictured together in 2018. Picture: Supplied

Mr von Moger was also a bodyguard for Craig Kelly at anti-lockdown events in Melbourne during Covid.

Peak Supports Tasmania Managing Director Jarv Flavel, who employed Mr von Moger, said he let him go two days into his induction training after Googling his name. Mr von Moger had not had any one-on-one time with a client.

After the incident earlier this year Mr Flavel wrote a letter to various bodies, including NDIS Minister Bill Shorten, concerned that the NDIS worker screening process, done at state and territory level, did not pick up Mr von Moger’s associations with members of these groups.

Mr Shorten’s office replied saying the NDIS Commission had referred the issue to the Regulatory Response section.

Members of the National Socialist Network are given a move on order from the police and march through North Sydney and St Leonards. Picture: Tom Parrish

A spokesperson from the White Rose Society said Mr von Moger, who previously lived in Victoria, but was now based in Tasmania, had kept a low profile recently.

It said in the past the National Socialist Network had groomed many young neurodivergent men into extremism and some of these young men had become the organisation’s “most active and rabid members”.

“We are aware of a number of distraught families of members of the National Socialist Network and other neo-Nazi groups who have no one to turn to as they lose their sons to extremism,” a spokesperson said.