Joyce pieman a churchgoing National

The man behind the alleged public assault on Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has been identified.

Qantas chief Alan Joyce gets a cream pie in the face from Tony Overheu while addressing a leadership breakfast at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Perth. Picture: The West Australian

The man behind yesterday’s extra­ordinary public assault on Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce is a senior member of at least two Perth-based religious organisations.

Mr Joyce, who has drawn controversy over his public advocacy for marriage equality, had a cream pie shoved in his face at a business breakfast in Perth yesterday by a man confirmed by The Australian as Tony Overheu, a one-time National­s candidate and a senior member of the Church of Christ in the southern Perth suburb­ of Willetton­.

The 67-year-old farmer says his motivation for the pie attack on Mr Joyce was that he is appalled by corporations that engage in “social engineering’’.

Mr Overheu is also listed as the national director of the WA branch of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship Inter­national.

Records show that Mr Overheu stood unsuccessfully as a Senate candidate for the Nationals in the 1980 federal election.

He is understood to have cut ties with the Nationals more than 20 years ago after his farming interests fell on hard times.

His strong religious ties suggest that yesterday’s attack may have been linked to Mr Joyce’s vigorous support for marriage equality.

In March, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton criticised Mr Joyce for using Qantas’s brand to campaign for same-sex marriage, arguing that the companies ­wading into the debate should “stick to their knitting”.

Mr Joyce had just begun speaking at yesterday’s business breakfast, where he was spruiking the airline’s recently announced direct flights to London, when a man appeared behind him with a pie.

The man grabbed Mr Joyce and pushed the pie in his face ­before walking off stage. Speaking after the incident, Mr Joyce said he had been on the ­receiving end of protests and stunts during his time at Qantas but had never experienced something quite like yesterday’s events.

“When you’ve been CEO of an airline for nine years, there’s a lot of things that have happened over that period of time,” Mr Joyce said. “This is different, this is ­certainly an unusual event, but things like this have happened in the past.”

Asked if his public position on social issues might have made him a target, Mr Joyce said he would leave it for police to investigate.

“We’re going into pure specul­ation here and I think the police need to investigate this. This is in the hands of police and we should let them do their investigation.’’

Mr Joyce joked that he hadn’t had a chance to taste the pie. “It was mostly on my glasses. My issue is I need a good drycleaner before I leave Perth, so if you have one, please recommend it.”

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, who was in the audience at the time of the attack, said the incident underscored the importance of security.

Late yesterday Mr Overheu, 67, was charged with giving false details to police. It’s understood that Mr Joyce intends to press further charges, although he has not yet provided a statement to police.

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