Queensland Young LNP member Nick Sowden (left)
poses for a photo with Liberal Leader BrendanNelson
in May 2008. (Facebook)
Queensland's Liberal-National Party (LNP) has expelled a young member who called US president Barack Obama a "monkey" on Twitter.
Griffith University medical student Nick Sowden stirred up a storm of controversy for his Twitter comments during Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the US president.
The 22-year-old says he is not a racist and his comments were supposed to be ironic and have been taken out of context.
"If i wanted to see a monkey on TV id [sic] watch Wildlife Rescue #justsaying #obama730," read one comment.
Another said: "Im [sic] not sure why they paid kerry to fly to america. if they wanted an interview with a monkey surely a Ferry to Taronga would have sufficed."
Mr Sowden's Twitter account has now been deleted, but there are hundreds of references to the comments on the internet.
The LNP's response was swift. President Bruce McIver says they do not want him on their team.
"No, most definitely not on our team at all," he said.
Mr Sowden says it was a poor attempt at irony which has been blown out of proportion.
"It's meant to be more of a joke against the Tea Party movement, the crazy right wing conservatives, Fox News type thing," he said.
"And it's something maybe that they would say and I think that's where the joke is. People who don't know me who read the retweets of it, they don't really realise the context... have claimed me to be a racist when I'm quite clearly not.
"I hadn't really thought much about it at the time and that's probably where it went a bit wrong... It's not against Barack as a person."
Apology
Mr Sowden says he does a lot of work for Indigenous health and charities in Ghana and Fiji which shows he is not a racist person.
He says he now regrets his comments and he would apologise to Mr Obama.
"I'm sure Barack Obama has a lot worse things in his life to deal with than a tweet from someone with 200 followers on the Gold Coast, but if he has taken offence, sure, I'll apologise," he said.
Mr Sowden's Facebook site contains a picture of Hitler in a parody of an Obama election poster but he says that too has been misconstrued.
"That picture of Obama was everywhere, there was all this hype which I didn't agree with - I didn't think it was warranted at the time - and I think that was one way of showing how the masses can be influenced like that," he said.
"If people want to call me a Nazi then that's obviously another ridiculous thing, I had family in a concentration camp, I had family who were migrants."
On Facebook, Mr Sowden is a fan of pages titled 'I hate it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President' and 'Obama screwed more people than Tiger Woods'.
His page includes a photo of a beaming Mr Sowden with his arm around former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson at a John Howard testimonial dinner.
Young LNP Queensland president Rod Schneider says Mr Sowden's comments are not the views of the Young Liberals and he welcomes the LNP's move to expel him from the party.
He says this was the latest in a "long line of indiscretions" from Mr Sowden.
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