On Wednesday, @GuardianAus revealed the Daily Telegraph attacked Sydney lord mayor's climate record based on doctored documents provided by Angus Taylor’s office. The minister has called the story a “conspiracy theory”. Here's how we checked those documents: A THREAD👇
There are competing versions of how the false figures came to be in the document used by Angus Taylor. Emails between the council and the Daily Telegraph show that Taylor’s office said it downloaded its erroneous document from the council’s website on 6 September, 2019.
But @cityofsydney has provided evidence the documents on its website have not been changed since they were first uploaded on 27 Nov, 2018. 
Here are the screenshots from the @cityofsydney content management system. They show the PDF version was last updated at 11:01am on November 27 2018 and the Word document was last updated at 2:53pm on the same date
. @GuardianAus has corroborated this by performing its own checks of metadata attached to the two files currently on the council’s website. The PDF document currently on the council’s website was last modified on 27 November 2018. The Word document was created on 19 November 2018
Three archived versions of the council’s annual report are available in the internet archive and display the accurate figures in March, April, and June 2019
The formatting and line spacing of the document used by Taylor’s office suggests it was originally a Word document, before being converted to PDF in some way.
The @cityofsydney is also obliged by local government laws to provide a copy of its annual report to the NSW Minister for Local Government
None of this shows that Angus Taylor or his office altered the document before it was provided to the Daily Telegraph. There is no suggestion that Taylor himself was responsible. The evidence shows that City of Sydney never altered the document on its website
Read the full story here: City of Sydney offers evidence it did not alter documents, as Angus Taylor denounces 'conspiracy theory' theguardian.com/australia-news…
