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Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce says the incident at the party’s Christmas function between NT Senator Sam McMahon and federal director Jonathan Hawkes has been resolved and appropriate action has been taken.
Senator McMahon allegedly threw hands at Hawkes as she was leaving and somehow, the news has filtered out to the media.
In response, Joyce said he has reprimanded McMahon for breaking the first rule of National Party Fight Club.
“She has spoken about Fight Club, which is unacceptable and I have accepted Senator McMahon’s apology for that,” Joyce told reporters today in Canberra.
“We have a special room for fighting and this fight took place outside that room, which is also unacceptable.”
The National Party Fight Room is shrouded in political folklore, similar to that of the Parliament House Interfaith Prayer Room.
Earlier this year, it’s alleged that Barnaby and David Littlerpround fought each other for 45 minutes to see who’d actually replace Michael McCormack as the leader.
Another fight between latchkey Queensland member, George Christensen, and upper house doormat, Matt Canavan, saw Canavan blackout after Christensen sat on his chest until he started begging for his life.
Each incident has only found its way into public discourse through un-named, anonymous sources.
The only confirmed fight to ever be spoken about by an eyewitness occurred in 1985.
Former Nationals leader Ralph Hunt took on Ian Sinclair and Doug Anthony at the same time and defeated them both.
The incident was detailed in Sinclair’s autobiography, The Cleaner From Bendemeer: The Ian Sinclair Story, and explains in detail how Hunt, who Sinclair refers to as “The Gwydir Sidewinder” pushed Anthony to the ground in the opening seconds of the fight and immediately booting him across the face has he tried to get up, leaving Sinclair feeling like he’d bitten off more than he could chew.
“He just kicked him in the head and said, ‘One down’, then picked up a small wooden sculpture of a wombat and threw it at me as hard as he could. Then he transversed the room and gave me one hell of a hiding. Never in my life have I been flogged like that. It was dreadful but I never felt so alive,” wrote Sinclair.
The Advocate reached out to The Nationals for comment but have yet to receive a reply.
More to come.
