Video of Australian Liberal candidate’s awkward interview goes viral

Awkwaaard!

A young Australian politician vying to become an MP has garnered some international attention for all the wrong reasons.

Jaymes Diaz — a 37 year old Liberal candidate for the riding of Greenway (in Northeast Sydney) — had a little trouble answering some basic questions about his party's policies in a television interview on Monday

He especially gets flustered when the reporter asks him a question about the Liberal Party's six-point plan to halt the inflow of asylum seekers.

One Australian newspaper, appropriately dubbed the video "Diaz and Confused."

[ Related: Australia enlists Nauru to aid in crackdown on boat refugees ]

The video has gone viral with news outlets on at least three continents picking it up.

Admirably, Tony Abbott, the leader of the Coalition (a merging of the Liberal and National Parties) came to the defence of his candidate in a radio interview on Monday.

"He's a relatively young bloke, he's in his early 30s, he has a lot of potential, he's quite smart, he's very well connected in the area … he's a good young fella," Abbott, the current opposition leader," Abbott said, according to the Guardian.

"Inevitably, a very experienced and slightly aggressive journalist shoves a microphone in your face and starts barking at you and it is possible to freeze.

"I've done it myself."

[ Related: BBC News identifies Aussie leader Kevin Rudd as Canada’s prime minister ]

Surprisingly, there's not a lot of Canadian examples of this sort of thing.

But maybe Diaz can call former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion to get some advice about how to get through the aftermath of an interview where you look utterly confused?

The Australian election is scheduled for September 7th.

We'll be watching to see how Diaz does.

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