ANU: Kangaroo cull discussion turned to 'threat of physical violence'

FOI request

UPDATE 1: Andrew Bolt has a lengthy article here (paywalled):

“Perfect Climate for Hollow Threats

IT was just too convenient, which is why some of us smelled a rat the day the story broke. It was June last year, and here’s the start of a Canberra Times story that went around the world.

“Australia’s leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.”

UPDATE 2: Tim Blair has more here.

UPDATE 3: Scans of The Australian article and Tim Blair’s article added below.

The Australian, which is doing a brilliant job of covering this story (thank you Christian), reports on page 2 the innocent discussion of kangaroo culling which top climate scientists at ANU decided to regard as a “death threat”:

SECOND-HAND accounts of a casual chat about Canberra’s regular kangaroo culls over dinner at an Australian National University forum on climate change turned the talk into a “serious threat of physical violence” against ANU researchers, one of the participants in the conversation believes.

The Australian revealed this month that 10 of 11 documents found in the wake of a Freedom of Information request lodged with the ANU after reports in Fairfax Media and on the ABC of “death threats” against climate scientists at the university were found by the Privacy Commissioner not to “contain threats to kill or threats of harm”.

An 11th, the commissioner ruled, “could be regarded as intimidating and at its highest perhaps alluding to a threat”. But he added: “I consider the danger to life or physical safety in this case to be only a possibility, not a real chance.”

The email says: “Looks like we’ve had our first serious threat of physical violence.”

A climate sceptic taking part in a deliberative democracy project on climate change in May 2010, it continues, “showed other participants his gun licence and explained to them how good a sniper he is”.

Retired Canberra public servant and 20-year kangaroo culler John Coochey believes he is the kangaroo culler referred to.

Mr Coochey took part in the first day of the project.

At a dinner for participants, he says, he was approached by the ACT’s then commissioner for sustainability and the environment, Maxine Cooper, whom he knew over matters to do with kangaroo culling, a vexed issue in Canberra.

Dr Cooper, Mr Coochey says, asked how he had gone in the annual accreditation test cullers are required to pass.

“I answered that I had top-gunned it with a perfect score,” he told The Australian.  “I also showed her my new culling – not firearms – licence.”

Mr Coochey says he realised some fellow participants might have been disquieted by kangaroo shooting, so he “made small talk” about the marksmanship expertise needed to gain the licence.

“This has now been portrayed as ‘showing a firearms licence and boasting about my ability as a sniper’,” he complained yesterday. (source)

But for our brave climate experts, it’s back to business as usual, as commenter OhSmeg reports the ABC is already on to the rehabilitation process, interviewing Will Steffen on ABC Breakfast this morning, spruiking yet more alarmist projections (widely reported in Fairfax*, surprise!) for the end of the world due to a tiny increase in a harmless trace gas.

Funnier still however, is that he allegedly blamed the overreaction to the emails on “security experts”. Have yet to see the video of this exchange but will post when it becomes available.

*Fairfax inadvertently captions a photo of Flannery with the term “climate activist” – at least they’re finally honest about that. Impartial my foot.

The Australian, p2, 14 May 2012 (click to enlarge)

Tim Blair, Daily Telegraph, p13, 14 May 2012 (click to enlarge)