Social media blew up on Monday night when a video released by the Gold Coast branch Young Liberal National Party was slammed for being “disturbing on so many levels” and “racist.”
Picture this: It’s Schoolies week, the HSC is finally over and mum and dad have said they will help front the money for you to visit the Gold Coast for a holiday after the trials and tribulations of year 12. You’re having the best time, you’ve been rowdy, you’ve had a good laugh, and better yet: you’re being interviewed!
Perhaps that was the only thing running through the seemingly ignorant minds of young Australian teens in the Gold Coast this week. The Young Liberal National Party decided to ‘throw in a bit of politics’ this year, and ask a handful of groups to give their opinions upon ‘controversial topics’ in Australian society.
One of the first questions asked was: “Do you agree with the statement: if you have a go, you get a go?”
Here are some of the responses:
“It’s all about a hand up, not a hand out!”
“If you leave yourselves down there, we’re not gonna pull you up!”
Note the contradictory irony of the two lines and that the people asked in the video are the ones who were lucky enough to have parents who could afford to send them to the Gold Coast during Schoolies week.
The most “disturbing” comment was made by Young LNP Volunteer Jake Scott.
When asked about whether we should “ditch the Australian Flag and Anthem” Scott delcared that he was:
“fed up with all these sports stars [that] stand up on our stages and they’re putting our Australian jumper on, they’re gonna sing the national anthem! I mean, we’ve gotta stop celebrating a culture that couldn’t even invent the bloody wheel for God’s sake…we’ve gotta start enjoying and living in Western culture.”
Another explained that:
“It’s traditional, it’s what we all identify as.”
“It doesn’t matter what the past is, it’s what the present is.”
These insensitive comments seem to highlight the pervading racism within the Young LNP, and the blatant disregard for the injustice Indigenous communities have endured, and continue to experience speaks volumes of how out of touch they truly are.
The video has since been pulled down from their Facebook, alongside the entire page itself. The LNP released a statement after social media’s condemnation of it, explaining that three of its members have since been suspended and that those involved in the video would receive “internal disciplinary action.”
All the Queensland LNP leader Deb Frecklington could say was that it was “inappropriate and the party is taking action.”
Please enjoy a one minute video from the press conference, where her only response to the questions was the same rehearsed line.
Proud of her Quandamooka heritage, State Labor Environment Minister Leanne Enoch said the video was:
“disturbing on many levels” and requested that “the opposition leader…call out these statements for what they are, and that’s racist.”
She also reminded her audience that she has “called out this kind of behaviour from the LNP before” and that “these kinds of views should not be allowed to simmer within any organisation.”
At the FIB Office, we can’t believe that we are entering a new decade, and that the party still hasn’t left its racism behind.
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