ON SEPTEMBER 30, 13 police officers including a riot-squad team rushed to the Castle Hill offices of federal MP for Mitchell, Alex Hawke, who had called for help claiming 40 ``uninvited people'' tried to gate-crash a party meeting.

What the ruckus was really about was soft-right Hawke supporters trying to keep out members of rival Liberal Party faction loyal to his former boss, the Christian right leader David Clarke, MLC.

It was not the first time, either.

Mr Hawke and Mr Clarke once close friends and tacticians are at war trying to control party branches of the north-west and elsewhere.

The weapon of choice is branch-stacking.

When the shouting had died down a police officer said he felt police had been used.

A Liberal Party inquiry was to be held into the incident one of several in recent months and a raft of Clarke supporters were summonsed to account. They lawyered up for the imminent inquiry and the vocal 2GB commentator Alan Jones went on the attack. Almost daily, he's been blasting Hawke as a disgrace to the Liberal Party and urging his dumping.

The inquiry apparently went into limbo. Now, a month later, no result.

``Hawke is terrified by the Alan Jones attack which really jeopardises his chances of gaining entry to the front bench of the Turnbull Opposition,'' said a party insider.

``The inquiry is now unofficially on the back-burner.''

But the State Government is helpfully trying to stir the pot. In Parliament last week, Police Minister Michael Daley answering a question about ATM crime suddenly alluded to the incident in Hawke's office, saying police resources should not be used to solve ``factional warfare'' within the Liberal party.

``It all sounds quite funny, Mr Speaker, but the allocation of police resources is a serious task and it can have implications for the safety of the whole community,'' he told the Parliament.

``Police resources should not be diverted into standover tactics and they shouldn't have to intervene in the on-going factional warfare between the Leader of the Opposition's numbers and the members of the religious right,'' he said.