Release from prison Van Tongeren expressed no remorse following his release from
Karnet Prison Farm in September 2002. His first public statement accused the Western Australian premier
Geoff Gallop and Attorney General
Jim McGinty of pandering to the Asian minority. He also denied being a terrorist. He soon formed a successor organisation to the ANM called the Australian Nationalist Worker's Union, and expressed interest in seeking election. Banned under Western Australian law from running for state parliament, Van Tongeren was free to run for a seat in the federal parliament. This led to the Attorney-General calling on the Commonwealth Government to tighten laws on the eligibility of convicted criminals.
Resumption of racist attacks In February 2004 three Chinese restaurants in Perth were firebombed in the early hours of the morning. Other Asian-owned shops and synagogues were plastered with posters and daubed with swastikas. Van Tongeren denied responsibility, instead claiming that the attacks must be the actions of angry Australians reacting against "Asian gangs and African crime." It was later reported that Van Tongeren instigated the attacks to drum up publicity for his book,
The ANM Story, which had been written in 1991 but remained unpublished for thirteen years. Western Australian police launched "Operation Atlantic" in response to the attacks, leading to the arrest of five men involved in the attacks. The police also identified a plot to harm member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly Jim McGinty and his family, two police officers and an ethnic community leader, and raided Van Tongeren's home. These threats led to Jim McGinty cancelling meetings in Adelaide and returning to Perth. In August 2004 a week-long man-hunt for Van Tongeren ended with police receiving a tip-off that located him at an RSL club. Van Tongeren claimed to be innocent, and that he was only hiding from the police out of fear that they would shoot him. Following these arrests, the racist graffiti attacks around the Perth CBD ceased. In February 2006, Van Tongeren, out on bail pending his trial, failed to report to police and was believed to be at large and travelling with former ANM member Matthew Billing. On 23 March 2006, a letter was received by staff at
ABC Television Studios, purporting to be from Van Tongeren. It claimed that charges against him were a conspiracy created by the WA Government, and indicated that they would need to be dropped by Attorney-General Jim McGinty, in order for Van Tongeren to return from hiding. A month later Van Tongeren and his co-accused Matthew Billing were found and arrested in the
Boddington area south-east of Perth. Both men once again faced the courts over the 2004 arson plots. During a hearing on 2 November, Van Tongeren collapsed, was taken to hospital, and later used a
wheelchair. Van Tongeren was released from jail on the condition that he leave Western Australia. He currently resides in the eastern states. In 2007 the ANM/ANWU was reported to have been disbanded. On 30 September 2023, Crispian Chan, an ethnic Chinese resident of Perth whose family's restaurant had been bombed by the ANM in the 1980s, published an article for the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation about how he had attempted to track van Tongeren down, discovering that he was living in South Australia, however was threatened by an associate of van Tongeren's. In his article, Chan compares van Tongeren to himself in the context of the two men's shared Asian heritage, and the fact that van Tongeren himself had suffered anti-Asian racism and bullying in his youth, citing an article written by Stella van Tongeren in 1990 talking about her son's childhood. == See also ==