A Canberra mail centre was closed down early on Friday morning, after packages containing a white powder, addressed to the Australia Christian Lobby, were discovered.

Australia Post has confirmed that HAZMAT teams and the ACT’s emergency services attended the mail centre and determined that the substance was harmless.

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“Australia Post takes the safety of all of our staff extremely seriously. Relevant authorities evacuated the Canberra Mail Centre early this morning following the detection of a suspicious mail item,” a spokesperson said.

The ACL has highlighted that it is being targeted over it’s stance against allowing same-sex couples to wed. Managing Director Lyle Shelton told Fairfax Media that his organisations has been subjected to a number of alarming incidents.

“This is obviously of great concern. We have been receiving packages of glitter all week, which we have not opened, and we have had individual people online encouraging people to send in noxious substances. We have reported that to the federal police,” he said.

“We think this should be a respectful debate, but in the last 12 months we have endured death threats, there has been a car bomb exploded outside our office, our office has been egged and we have been mailed all of this glitter.”

“This is part of what would seem to be a way to try and intimidate us into silence.” Shelton said.

Earlier this week Shelton suggested that an offensive poster that contained false facts about the children of LGFBTI+ people which discovered in a Melbourne Laneway was potentially planted by the supporters of the YES campaign.

The ACL head also recently suggested that most gay people had no interest in getting married. Shelton has previously compared marriage equality and anti-bullying programs in schools to the rise of the Nazi Party and the Holocaust.

OIP Staff