Queensland MP Billy Gordon has criticised as a “kangaroo court” a Channel Nine interview in which his former partner said he was “like a monster” while detailing domestic violence allegations.
Kristy Peckham, the mother of two of Gordon’s children, has told A Current Affair in an interview that she suffered “so much violence” at the hands of the former Labor MP and that she had “kept everything” that would prove her claims.
Her claims of repeated serious assault and deprivation of liberty by Gordon between 2005 and 2008 are currently under investigation by police after a referral from Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Gordon, who resigned under pressure from the Labor party but refused to quit parliament after the abuse allegations and his past criminal history were revealed, issued a short statement before the interview was scheduled for broadcast on Thursday.
“I note the kangaroo court known as A Current Affair will air a segment about me tonight,” Gordon said.
“Unlike that program and other media outlets, I respect the current police investigation into certain allegations against me. I will thus make no comment until it is completed.
“Meanwhile I will continue to work hard on the issues that matter to my constituents.”
Peckham, who dealt with three Liberal National party rivals of her former husband before taking her complaint to Palaszczuk, denied making the allegations for “political gain”.
“It just happened that he is a politician and to do it the right way I went to his boss, who happened to be the premier,” she told ACA.
Peckham said during her relationship with the Gordon, now MP for Cook, that she “wasn’t allowed to go anywhere and there was so much violence”.
“To me he is like a monster,” she said.
ACA reporter Leisa Goddard said Peckham told her that “because she has stayed silent he is able to play the victim, so now she wants Queensland to know the truth about the monster they have representing them in parliament”.
“She has to talk about it because otherwise he gets away with it and nothing gets done,” Goddard said.
A Channel Nine spokeswoman would not comment on whether ACA paid for the interview.
Former state LNP MP Peter Dowling, whose parliamentary career was effectively ended by revelations of an explicit picture he sent to his mistress, told ABC radio he had sympathy for Gordon’s situation.
“He’s bounced back from [a background of juvenile offences] and there are no charges and there has been no arrest [over the domestic violence allegations],” Dowling said.
“He’s a guy that’s getting the world’s spotlight turned on him for a whole lot of nonsense.”
Dowling said Gordon was “probably thinking ‘how do I shield my family, my friends, my contacts, my personal community from this onslaught?’ And you can’t.”
