Liberal MP Alby Schultz has just got into a physical fight with one his colleagues, frontbencher Chris Pearce, during a heated exchange in this morning’s Liberal Party Room meeting in Canberra.
Schultz, whose hatred of the National Party knows no bounds and once said that he’d “slaughtered better animals” than Barnaby Joyce, was at the centre of a fiery argument among MPs about three-cornered contests where Libs and National candidates run against each other.
Schultz became so angry during this morning’s debate that he stormed out of the meeting and, as he left, fellow Liberal Chris Pearce quipped “have a nice day” - at which point Schultz turned and shirt-fronted him. Apparently three MPs had to restrain Mr Schultz.
“There was a bit of pushing and shoving,” a source inside the meeting said.
“He didn’t try to belt him but yeah he jostled him…it was all contained within about five minutes. Apologies were given and accepted. But yeah, it was an incident. I can see why there is interest in it though.”
The background to the dispute is that the Liberal Party wants to run a candidate in the NSW seat of Monaro, a traditional National seat, so as payback the Nats want to run a candidate in the seat of Wollondilly, a traditional Liberal seat.
It’s all pretty juvenile stuff and in light of the merged Coalition no-show at this year’s Queensland election, the kind of thing which will do the conservatives no good whatsoever.
More importantly though, it’s another violence-related distraction for Malcolm Turnbull, who should really be concentrating on his debt and deficit message, rather than explaining why he’s got so many testosterone-fuelled lunatics on his staff and also now in his Party Room.
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