Monique Ryan event: White supremacist crashes candidates meeting in seat of Kooyong, police called
A figure in Melbourne’s far-right scene has crashed a candidate’s forum in the seat of Kooyong, leading to a confrontation with members of the audience.
A volunteer group that advocates for the ABC held the forum at the Kew Library, in Melbourne’s southeast on Wednesday night.
Matt Trihey wandered into the library with a cameraman in tow, and began yelling about immigration and crime.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“How dare you do this,” a member of the audience shouted.
“How dare they do this to our country,” Mr Trihey replied.
After two minutes of yelling, which the audience returned, a woman walked up and tried to punch him in the face.
Mr Trihey smiled, began slowly walking backward toward the exit, but continued shouting about “not being represented by this so-called liberal democracy”.
Police were called. A spokesperson told NewsWire three men had reportedly disrupted the meeting.
“The men were removed from the premises before police arrival,” the spokesperson said.
“Officers spoke to the men and at this stage no further complaints have been made to police. The investigation is ongoing.”
On Thursday morning, Teal independent Monique Ryan told ABC Radio the woman who threw the punch was a frail “little lady” and the men who crashed the meeting were “right-wing bullies”.
“She was clearly expressing distress, she was kind of screaming,” Dr Ryan said.
“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.
“(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 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.”
Most of the incident was posted online by an ‘independent journalist’, who was filming as they walked into the meeting with Mr Trihey. This ‘journalist’ has 28,000 followers on X, and mostly posts articles focusing on the ethnicities of criminals in Australia.
In the clip, Mr Trihey is wearing a T-shirt with the logo of white-supremacist group, the National Workers Alliance, which he founded.
Mr Trihey has also been politically active at public events with neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell.
On Wednesday night, the Kew Library hosted the event for candidates in the hotly contested seat of Kooyong.
The Coalition held Kooyong for 70 years, before Dr Ryan defeated then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg at the 2022 election.
The electorate encompasses some of the most affluent suburbs in Melbourne, and sits just a few kilometres southeast of the CBD.
Originally published as White supremacist crashes friends of ABC candidates meeting in seat of Kooyong
