Australian politician under fire for posting gun range photo on Facebook
A conservative Australian politician who posted a photo of himself on Facebook holding a gun in a dig at environmentalists was reported to police and accused of being insensitive after a mass shooting at a US school.
George Christensen put up the image on Saturday showing him at a shooting range with the comment: “You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, greenie punks?”
He said it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the “Dirty Harry” films starring Clint Eastwood who takes on “people who are conducting illegal activity, such as the greens are”.
I’m not going to be moralised to by these extreme greens who put the livelihoods, safety and lives of other people at risk
The MP has criticised environmentalists – sometimes backed by the Greens political party – who have tried to block mining projects, including chaining themselves to machinery.
The Facebook post was referred to the Australian Federal Police by the Greens, with their Senator Sarah Hanson-Young saying on Twitter she had received an emailed threat from one of Christensen’s supporters.
“Frankly, guns are not a joke and particularly in the wake of the massacre in the US only last week, 17 people shot dead, including children,” Hanson-Young told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the post “very inappropriate”. It was also widely criticised by politicians from other parties.