Sydney,
\nA conservative Australian politician who posted a photo of himself on Facebook holding a gun in a jibe at environmentalists was reported to police and slammed<\/p>\n
today as insensitive after a mass US school shooting.<\/p>\n
George Christensen put up the image on Saturday showing him in a shooting stance with the comment “You gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, greenie<\/p>\n
punks?”.<\/p>\n
He claimed it was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the “Dirty Harry” film franchise in which a police officer played by Clint Eastwood takes on “people who are<\/p>\n
conducting illegal activity, such as the greens are”.<\/p>\n
The MP has been critical of environmentalists — sometimes backed by the Greens political party — who have tried to blockade mining projects, including<\/p>\n
chaining themselves to machinery.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
emailed threat from one of Christensens supporters.<\/p>\n
“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<\/p>\n
the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called the post “very inappropriate”. It was also widely criticised by politicians from other parties.<\/p>\n
Christensen, whose National party is the junior partner in the governments ruling coalition, later deleted it but responded defiantly, saying: “Im not going to be<\/p>\n
moralised to by these extreme greens who put the livelihoods, safety and lives of other people at risk.” He said the post had nothing to do with the American<\/p>\n
shooting last week where a 19-year-old killed 17 people at his former high school, claiming instead it was a comment on environmentalists “illegal activism on<\/p>\n
mine sites”.<\/p>\n
Australia has tough gun laws that include bans on certain weapons, a minimum age, licences and secure storage, after a mass shooting at the historic<\/p>\n
Tasmanian colonial convict site of Port Arthur in 1996 where 35 people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sydney, A conservative Australian politician who posted a photo of himself on Facebook holding a gun in a jibe at environmentalists was reported to police and slammed today as insensitive after a mass US school shooting. George Christensen put up the image on Saturday showing him in a shooting stance with the comment “You gotta […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22413,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22414,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22412\/revisions\/22414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}