Federal election 2025 LIVE updates: Labor, Coalition deny hiding energy plans; Kooyong forum crashed by far-right

Teal Kooyong MP Monique Ryan says the men who gatecrashed a forum last night were “right-wing bullies” and said the woman who threw a punch at them was distressed.

Last night, a candidates’ forum in the key Melbourne seat descended into chaos after three far-right agitators gatecrashed the event.

Ryan personally intervened to stop attendees from getting into physical altercations after a frustrated female attendee tried to punch one of the agitators in the face. It’s the second such disruption at a forum in Kooyong this week.

Speaking this morning on ABC Melbourne, Ryan said when the three men entered the room, they “looked a bit menacing” and immediately started shouting about anti-immigration, crime and rape which she said distressed the audience, including the woman who threw a punch.

“She was clearly expressing distress. She was kind of screaming, actually. And then she went over to him, and she sort of threw a punch at him. She was a little lady, pretty frail, and he was not a small man, and I was really concerned about that, and the potential for that to escalate, where he did give her a push or something like that,” Ryan said.

“[I] firmly moved her away and asked another member of the audience to look after her. She actually looked a bit taken aback by her own action in doing that … I spoke to her afterwards, and she was a bit horrified by the whole thing.

“I asked one of the other candidates to call the police, and members of the audience and organisers managed to move the men out of the room. It took us, took a while, but gradually we managed to move them out of the room and out of the library … eventually they left.

“It was stupid, pointless posturing, basically by these right-wing bullies … these people were just undertaking pointless disruption.”