Prime Ministerial hopeful Tony Abbott has stood by a Mackay city councillor standing for the Liberal seat of Dawson who wrote an article linking Jews to the crucifiction.

George Christensen needs a 2.6% swing to win the Labour-held seat of Dawson in North Queensland.

The offending article was written in 1998 when the candidate was at university. It also called women”stupid” and allegedly made jokes about AIDS.

Tony Abbott has told the ABC that he and Julia Gillard had “colourful stuff” from their uni days stating: “If there’s colourful stuff from George Christensen’s uni days, I think we just have to accept that uni is a colourful place and move on.

“He’s a good bloke and I stand by him,” Mr Abbott added.

Christensen has issued a statement through the Liberal National Party’s main Queensland office and is refusing to discuss the matter directly.

He said: “Twelve years ago I was a teenaged university student. Like many of my classmates I was newly active in student politics. I wrote articles for and also compiled a number of student newsletters, which were designed for circulation within the university community.

Some of the content I provided for those publications was intended to shock readers or to use humour in a shocking way rather than to provide legitimate commentary.

In the process, I published and circulated what were clearly stupid statements which I regret. To those offended by those statements, I apologise without any reservation. No-one should take seriously statements published in the context of university politics.”

The comedian Austen Tayshus is running against Abbott in the seat of Warringah.

The Australian Sex Party candidate, who launched his campaign today, told J-Wire: “How typical of Abbott’s and the conservatives’ double standards to simply try to brush this off. It just goes to show that no-one really knows what these guys stand for.”

I have grown up and moved on since then.

Source: JWire