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Pressure mounts for apology over LNP racist video

Gold Coast Young LNP chair Barclay McGain (fourth from left) interviews schoolies in the footage.

Gold Coast Young LNP chair Barclay McGain (fourth from left) interviews schoolies in the footage. Photo: YouTube

Queensland’s opposition leader is facing increasing pressure to apologise after the Gold Coast youth branch of the Liberal National Party posted a racist video online.

Barclay McGain, chair of the Gold Coast Young LNP, a teenage boy who made racist remarks about Australian Aboriginal culture and a third individual who put it online were suspended by the party on Tuesday.

They are also being investigated by the party’s internal disputes committee, which will make recommendations to the party’s state executive next year.

Mr McGain, who was filmed interviewing the boy on the Gold Coast, was seen laughing when the teen said: “I’m fed up with having all these sports stars stand out on our stages and not sing the national anthem.

“I mean we’ve got to stop celebrating a culture that couldn’t even invent the bloody wheel for God’s sake. We’ve got to start enjoying and living in Western culture.”

Mr McGain said on Tuesday “the powers that be” had banned him from commenting about the incident.

“It has been a whirlwind 24 hours but hopefully I can go back to being a normal 19-year-old. I just have to let it go and move on,” he said.

Another video emerged on Tuesday of Mr McGain impersonating Donald Trump at the Great Wall of China.

The video, posted on YouTube last year, shows Mr McGain saying “this is not the greatest wall but it’s a great wall … We’re going to build the greatest wall, it is going to be to keep out the Mexicans, not the Mongolians, or the chikedy chongs, not Genghis Khan bing bong, bing bong.”

The party’s leader, Deb Frecklington, has so far refused to be drawn on the issue.

However senior members of the Queensland Labor government say she needs to apologise.

“There is zero excuse and Deb Frecklington needs to apologise,” Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in a statement on Wednesday.

“She needs to stand up today and do what she failed to do yesterday,” State Labor’s indigenous Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch added.

-AAP

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