Today the lectionary is going to be a little delayed, because there has been a bombing at a Christian Lobbying Office over in Australia. The Federal Gov’t there is powerful: my trade college spends a fair amount of effort in lobbying at that level because those policies affect all Australians.
And they face opposition.
Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton last night tweeted a photograph of the incident and said that no staff were injured.
“A vehicle has rammed our office in Canberra & exploded all staff are safe,” he posted.
“I do not know the condition of the driver. Prayers appreciated.”
A man is believed to have driven the white van towards the Eternity House building about 10.45pm. The explosion destroyed the vehicle and blew out some of the windows of the office building.
I cannot find any discussion of who drove the van. Apparantly he is under medical attention.
If there is progress, I will update during the day.
UPDATE.
The Driver of the van has been interviewed and the attack is reported as not … religiously motivated.
Around 9.35pm, ACT Policing received a report from ACT Fire and Rescue that a vehicle had exploded and was on fire adjacent to a building on Campion Street, Deakin. The building houses the headquarters of the Australian Christian Lobby.
The driver appears to have ignited gas cylinders within the vehicle, causing an explosion which damaged the vehicle and building.
The male presented himself to the Canberra Hospital with serious burn injuries. Police spoke briefly with the man before he continued with treatment. Police were able to establish the man’s actions were not politically, religiously or ideologically motivated.
Investigations are ongoing; however it is unknown when police will be able to speak with the man further, due to his medical condition.
Police have identified the man as a 35-year-old Australian Citizen residing in the ACT. The man is not previously known to police.
Police will be conducting a thorough investigation including previous threats to the Australian Christian Lobby.
ACT Policing Deputy Chief Police Officer Mark Walters reassured the community that there is no concern for public safety.
“Police are conducting a thorough investigation and there is no threat to public safety. We want the Canberra community to go about their business today reassured that ACT Policing is working to establish the circumstances surrounding this incident,” Commander Walters said.
The manager of ACL is skeptical. He is not apologizing for his comments that the attack was designed to intimidate his organization, despite the left, predictably, demanding this.
Before that statement Shelton, the ACL executive director, repeatedly linked the explosion to ACL’s political advocacy and suggested it was targeted at the Christian group, which has opposed the Safe Schools program and same-sex marriage.
“Obviously … you don’t just drive around the corner here at 10 o’clock at night, park a van loaded with gas cylinders then detonate it unless you’re trying to send a message to the ACL,” Shelton had told a press conference at the scene.
“I’m sure it’s a message to intimidate us, to cause us to be silent in the public square, and that’s something we’re not prepared to do.”
After the police statement, Shelton told ABC News “as much as I obviously respect the police and the work they do, I’m a little bit sceptical”.
“This seems too much of a coincidence [that] this could be solely the motivation of someone who was just acting without any targeted motive,” he said. “He was pulled from a burning wreck when he gave that statement. He has grievous injuries.”
Shelton said it was too early to rule out that ACL was targeted and claimed that “whilst the police had come to their view, they said they couldn’t rule it in or out when they spoke to me on the phone”.
ACT policing deputy chief police officer Mark Walters had said the police were “confident” in ruling out religious, political or ideological motives but would not be drawn on how they had established this in the interview with the driver.
In an earlier interview with ABC News Breakfast, Shelton had said he “never thought our office would be the subject of a car bomb attack”.
“This is not the sort of thing that I thought would occur when I joined ACL almost 10 years ago to be involved in political and public advocacy.”
Further Update.
The headline here is misleading… but the fix seems to be in. The ACL deserved it and it was non political. You cannot have both. Canberra Times:
Same sex marriage is not legal in Australia. They have to go to my country to get hitched. It is going to a referendum. And thus, the rhetoric is heated.
They have regularly clashed with leading advocacy groups like Australian Marriage Equality. Alex Greenwich, the co-chair of AME, called the van incident “shocking and saddening”.
“Thoughts and prayers are with everyone at the Australian Christian Lobby,” he tweeted.
Mr Shelton cut short his holiday to fly to Canberra on Thursday to inspect the damage.
“I stress I don’t know the motivation of last night’s attack but I’m very concerned members of Parliament, particularly on the extreme left, refer to us in the Parliament as hate groups [and] as bigots. That doesn’t help the situation. If there are people who are a bit unhinged out there, that sort of rhetoric doesn’t help that,” he told Sky News.
“I think as a society we’ve got to have civil debate and we’ve got to stop the name calling and the slurs.”
The ACL has itself been accused of using offensive and incendiary language.
In May, Mr Shelton suggested same-sex marriage and Safe Schools were comparable to the atrocities of the Holocaust, saying such things reflected “a failure of those of us who know better”.
“The cowardice and weakness of Australia’s ‘gatekeepers’ is causing unthinkable things to happen, just as unthinkable things happened in Germany in the 1930s,” he said.
He has also said same-sex marriage would create an environment for children that was akin to the stolen generations, whereby Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes.
There is a risk that all this will relate more to global issues than what is happening inside whatever the Beltway is for Canberra. It is too early to tell. But the Australian Marriage Equality people are correct: a debate should not lead to bombs.