Stephen Smith's office says the Defence Minister has received threats in the wake of a sex scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

The threats were confirmed as fresh allegations emerged of systemic bullying and bastardisation, sometimes bordering on sexual assault, at the Academy.

And Defence says it is still investigating personnel who allegedly set up a Facebook hate page to vilify serving gay members of the Defence Force.

Mr Smith has been criticised by some in the Defence community after announcing a raft of reforms in the wake of the Academy's webcam sex case last week.

The case exposed a lurking power struggle between Mr Smith and Defence top brass, with the Academy's commander stood down and Mr Smith and Defence Chief Angus Houston forced to deny claims Air Chief Marshal Houston threatened to resign over the issue.

Now the minister's office says it has received several threats via email.

But Mr Smith is refusing to disclose the nature of the correspondence and has stopped short of labelling them "death threats".

The matter has now been referred to the Australian Federal Police.

Former students and lecturers at the Academy say the culture there has tolerated bad behaviour and warned the various inquiries need to get to the bottom of the problem once and for all.

Mark Drummond is a schoolteacher these days, but he was in the first intake of cadets at the Academy 25 years ago.

"There were a handful of occasions where I was literally just standing around minding my own business and I overheard horrible accounts of what had happened to some people," he said.

"These weren't like distant accounts of distant rumours, they were very proximate, direct accounts of such and such happened to this individual.

"And they were just these gruelling, horrible accounts. I must have heard of about five absolutely horrendous accounts in 1986 and 1987 - my most vivid memories are from 1987."

He says the cases included gang rapes and routine bastardisation.

"You know, there was a practice called 'woofering' where a male cadet or midshipman had genitals sucked into a vacuum cleaner nozzle," he said.

"I mean, this was a common enough practice for there to be a perceived need by the formal military hierarchy within the Academy to issue directives that went down through the cadet hierarchy verbally - I don't think anyone would have been game to get things in writing - verbally, to cease to practice.

"I recall at least two or three times having it come through the cadet hierarchy that there's to be no more woofering take place.

"It must have been far more than just an isolated sort of crime ... no two ways about it. This is a multiple perpetrator sexual assault where there's no way on earth that the person having it done to could be said to be consenting."

Mr Drummond tutored and lectured at the Academy into the 1990s and says the toxic culture persisted.

His recollections are backed by Gregory Pemberton, a Duntroon graduate and also a former teacher at ADFA.

"Of course there's a very heightened - you might call it macho - culture which leads to a sort of a heightened bullying culture, but it's a slightly different bullying culture from normal in the sense that it's backed by the fact that the people doing the bullying have almost a sort of legal power because they rank, they have authority," he said.

"And also the bullying is sort of not just bullying per se, it's enshrined in the culture as part of the traditions of the place.

"I think when you first encounter it, you're shocked by it, and your automatic reaction is that it's wrong. But gradually the bulk of the people being bullied come to accept that it's part of the culture. Then, within a year's time, they're ready to become bullies themselves."

Meanwhile the Defence Department says it is continuing to investigate links between serving members and an anti-gay social media campaign.

Defence received a complaint in August last year about a Facebook page containing attacks against personnel who are gay.

The page reportedly threatened to expose "bum bandits getting around in the ADF" and included the names of allegedly gay soldiers as well as links to graphic videos.

The matter was referred to the Defence Force Investigative Service and one of the members targeted on the site made a formal complaint to New South Wales Police.

Defence says it is inappropriate to make further comment on the issue.