SYDNEY, Australia — The Australian teenager known as “Egg Boy,” speaking publicly to the news media for the first time since he cracked an egg on a far-right politician’s head, acknowledged, “I understand what I did was not the right thing to do.”

“However,” the teenager, Will Connolly, 17, said in an interview with Channel 10, an Australian television channel that aired on Monday evening, “this egg has united people.”

Mr. Connolly, who has become an international symbol against bigotry because of the encounter, added that the episode had been used to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the families of those killed in the March 15 terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.

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That money is from a fund-raising page that was set up for the teenager and initially intended to help cover Mr. Connolly’s legal fees and to buy “more eggs.” By Monday, it had raised almost 80,000 Australian dollars, about $56,000.