A Queensland barber has defended using a racial slur to refer to the coronavirus in a sign on his shop window.
Chris Manning has been doing 'conservative' men's haircuts for nearly four decades and hasn't minced his words when explaining his opening hours.
The Nerang barber put up a sign referring to the pandemic as the China Virus, which has long been lamented by critics as racist and unnecessary.
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He's since been hit with an official complaint about the sign but he's sticking to his guns.
Mr Manning was prompted to put up the sign after Joe Biden banned the term from being used in official government documents.
Speaking to News Corp, the barber said: "That idiot in America Joe Biden banned it, that's why I put it up. And 99 per cent of my customers look at it and agree with me. It's not big deal, what are they are they going to do, sue me?
"I should have expected this, there are so many bleeding hearts around, everyone is just wrapped in cotton wool these days. They're lefties, that's all they are.
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"I don't care, and I'm not taking it down, I might even get a bigger one made because I actually wanted the words China virus in bigger letters but they put them in small ones."
Mr Manning doesn't appear to care that the use of the term 'China Virus' on social media was linked with a rise in anti-Asian sentiments in the US.
Researcher Yulin Hswen told Yahoo that there was a massive shift when then-President Donald Trump tweeted China Virus in a hashtag for the first time.
"Hashtags are very much linked to real world hate crimes, because they are a way of aggregating and joining people who have similar interests, and they're easy to find," she said.
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"It's a tag to say, these-- these are my feelings and sentiments towards a particular group, or particular topic."
But Mr Manning has questioned why people are able to say the UK or South African strain, which is where they originated from, but not say China Virus.
A spokesperson for the Gold Coast Chinese Community said the term has caused real world harm to Asian people in America and they don't want to see that emulated here in Australia.
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Featured Image Credit: Nenad Stojkovic (Flickr)Topics: Australia