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Owner of a Southern Cross tattoo Nick Ward (34) wants to make it very clear to anyone who has viewed the constellation inked onto his perfectly roided arm that he got it done “before all that stuff in Cronulla.”

Ward stated his decision to get the tattoo came from being an impressionable country boy who got it along with 30 other mates who all happened to be white but “it wasn’t really like that, it wasn’t for white pride, just mates.”

Although he enjoyed the patriotic tattoo for a few years, it was in 2005 during the Cronulla Riots between white and Middle Eastern Australians that the tattoo suffered a PR nightmare when branded patriots beat the shit out of Muslims because their friends told them to via text.

Following the highly televised riots, the Southern Cross tattoo became somewhat emblematic of Australian resistance to multiculturalism something that Ward would like to make clear he is not at all against, just slightly concerned about.

“No Muslims are fine obviously, as long as they don’t want to practice Sharia law, whatever that is.”

While Ward states he does in no way regret his tattoo he wants to make it clear that he wishes people would not judge him based on appearance and get to know him before painting him with too broad a brush.

“I’m not a fucking redneck” he said.