BUZZFEED
LANE SAINTY
Culleton says his comments were misinterpreted and he was talking about a mass gassing of sheep.
Culleton said his comments had been misinterpreted as a reference to the Holocaust, and he was instead talking about a mass gassing of sheep that occurred in Australia in the 1990s.
“During Senator Culleton’s press conference in Canberra last week – when he mentioned ‘gassing’ he was referring to the context of his maiden speech where 20 million sheep were gassed,” a spokesperson for Culleton told BuzzFeed News.
In the speech, Culleton spoke about visiting a farm only to discover a running petrol motor being used as “an improvised gassing plant” after the government ordered a cull.
“The farmers were running sheep into the back of semi tippers, rolling the tarps over the top, shutting the back tailgates and gassing the young sheep to death—under instructions from the then government! I vomited over the fence, as a lot of the sheep appeared to be still clinging on to life,” he told the senate.
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman, Dvir Abramovich, said he accepted the “very much needed clarification” but that he was still troubled by Senator Culleton’s remarks.
“We hope that senator Culleton recognises and understands our earlier concerns and the hurt that his remarks caused, and call on him to use this opportunity to unequivocally denounce and speak out against the trivialization of the Holocaust and all forms of bigotry.”
Alex Ryvchin, the Public Affairs Director at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told BuzzFeed News the explanation “strains credulity”.
“You don’t tell sheep to ‘Come take a shower’ … unless the sheep in the Senator’s story were miraculously endowed with the gift of human communication,” he said.
“We urge the senator to apologise for his remarks.”