The federal MP Andrew Laming has sacked a staff member who had been under Liberal National party investigation in relation to an offensive video, after Guardian Australia raised fresh questions about a separate incident in which Barclay McGain, 20, shared a grinning selfie with a racially offensive figurine.
McGain, the former chairman of the Gold Coast Young LNP, confirmed he had also resigned from the party on Thursday, without explaining the reason.
Laming hired McGain as an electorate officer, a taxpayer-funded position, in February, when McGain was under party investigation. Laming told Guardian Australia: “After becoming aware of the material, the staff member’s employment in my office was terminated.”
Over the past few days Guardian Australia has put questions to McGain, Laming and the LNP about offensive social media posts.
McGain was suspended from the party on 3 December over a video in which he laughed when a teenager denigrated Indigenous Australians by saying the country should “stop celebrating a culture that couldn’t even invent the bloody wheel”. McGain was interviewing school leavers on the Gold Coast during schoolies week about whether the Australian flag and anthem should be “kept or ditched”.
Guardian Australia has learnt that McGain shared a Snapchat of himself grinning while posing in front of an antique-style money box depicting a black person with exaggerated features – similar to those portrayed in offensive blackface caricatures – just days after the video that led to his suspension was taken down.
Guardian Australia has chosen not to publish the picture.
In defending the photo, McGain said his step-father was “a proud Aboriginal man”.
Asked why he would distribute the image the day after his party suspension, McGain said: “The photo was taken (without any caption) to convey the irony of myself being cast in the media as someone who ‘disrespects Indigenous culture’ when, in reality, I’d grown up over the past 12 years, with an Aboriginal step-father, who always respected and honoured his Indigenous heritage.”
McGain said the the photo had been taken at the house of his stepfather, who bought the money box years ago.
McGain’s resignation from the LNP came two days after a party spokesperson confirmed he was still suspended and subject to an internal disciplinary investigation.
Laming this week criticised the Victorian government over the social media posts of public servants. The MP for the Queensland seat of Bowman posted on Facebook that “protected species in Labor departments” were “too weak to survive in the private sector; too gutless to face the public in election”.
Guardian Australia has seen evidence McGain has continued to post offensive material since being employed by Laming.
Last month, in response to a post in a closed Facebook chat group asking “What is your least favourite nationality (to both visit and live with) and why?”, McGainreplied: “Africans”.
McGain said that comment had been “taken completely out of context to conflate this with a matter of racism”.
He provided a screenshot of a later exchange in which someone challenged him to explain his reasoning, and he replied that “by most metrics, African countries have high rates of crime, corruption, violence and poverty”. He added: “I would think these characteristics would make it an undesirable place to visit. Not that it’s fair to cast those of African nationalities into the same boat.”
And in a Facebook post supporting Drew Pavlou, the student activist suspended from the University of Queensland, McGain wrote: “Drew Pavlou is Mein Führer” – meaning “my leader”, a term used to refer to Adolf Hitler. The post also included a Downfall parody meme.
There is no suggestion Pavlou shares McGain’s views, or was aware of the post.
McGain told Guardian Australia his comment was in response to a video shared, but not created, by him. He said it had been “misrepresented and maliciously taken out of context to construe a false narrative” and did not reflect any sympathy for “the heinous and despicable actions committed by the Third Reich in World War Two”.
“It was to verbalise what was being portrayed in the video which was Drew Pavlou voicing the German words of Bruno Ganz, an actor in the Hollywood film Downfall, reflecting his trial against the university and I unreservedly apologise to anyone who took offence or saw it as anything other than my intention.”
He said a separate post celebrating how the Nazis were “crushed” 75 years ago “very clearly demonstrates my utter condemnation of the fascist ideology”.
Asked why he would not take more care to avoid potentially offensive posts once he started work in a publicly funded position, McGain said he had always sought to voice his opinions “in a justified, polite and respectful manner”.
He endorsed a quote by the controversial Canadian commentator Jordan Peterson that “in order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive”.
Laming himself got into hot water last month when he posted a photoshopped image of the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, depicted as a Nazi along with the words “I know nothing!” – a phrase used in the 1970s prisoner of war TV series Hogan’s Heroes. Palaszczuk’s grandparents were tortured by the Nazis.
Laming and McGain both posted an identical apology message on Facebook around the same time. “I apologise for yesterday’s meme. It was shared but not created by me,” Laming and McGain both posted.
McGain said he was not responsible for Laming’s original post of the photoshopped Palaszczuk image, but as an employee of the electorate office was involved in dealing with subsequent questions and comments from constituents.
McGain has previously lamented the media’s focus on “systemic racism”, which he said no longer existed in Australia.
The University of Queensland economics and arts student wrote an article for the Caldron Pool claiming Australia had “turned a new leaf making systemic racism, or the practices and laws that were innately discriminatory, a thing of the past … Whilst racism will sadly always occur, the myth that systemic racism dominates the Australian culture of today is an outright lie.”
McGain told Guardian Australia his social media reflected his “strong belief that ALL races are equal and should be treated as such in EVERY facet of our society”.
