Embattled Cook MP Billy Gordon will stay in Queensland parliament after his reputation has been shredded by domestic violence claims.

The balance-of-power MP was accused by two women of domestic abuse and has a criminal record stretching back to 1987 and an apprehended violence order brought by his mother. Police are investigating the domestic violence claims.

He is the subject of a struggle to seize control of the parliament from the Government which had a one-seat majority with the help of a deal with Independent MP and Speaker Peter Wellington.

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“I am not going to make a decision straight away. I need to be around my family and supporters,” Mr Gordon was quoted as saying in the Western Cape Bulletin.

“I am not going to be denied natural justice.”

He has resigned from the Labor Party under calls to have him expelled. He now sits on the crossbench.

The unedifying spectacle of Queensland’s political crisis carries on for its fifth day with allegations that an unsuccessful Liberal-National Party candidate is behind destabilising leaks.

A second government MP has been accused of assaulting his ex wife “with his fists, leather straps and any other implement that was handy,” the Brisbane Times reports.

Her name was not disclosed in the letter to the Fairfax website and her abuser’s name was also not disclosed.

The Australian reported the distributor of the original allegations against Mr Gordon was David Kempton, who was a frontbencher in the Newman government before being uprooted in the January election and was the first of three MPs approached with damaging allegations about his successor.

Mr Gordon is at the centre of the struggle to shave the government’s slender majority as he considers calls for him to stand down from parliament.

Mr Gordon resigned from the Labor Party and is sitting on the crossbenches while Queensland Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk held talks with Katter’s Australia Party MPs seeking their support.

Independent MP and Queensland Speaker Peter Wellington, who gave his support to Ms Palaszczuk, was “furious” over the affair.

“I’m concerned the former partner of the member for Cook is being used to destabilise the government of Queensland,” he said.

“If the member for Cook’s former partner is going to try to play me for a fool and release every item of correspondence, that seems there is something else behind this.”

The Opposition leader Lawrence Springborg called for Mr Gordon to leave Parliament so that a by-election can be held in his seat.

“Billy Gordon should go and the premier should answer some questions and not attempt to make herself the victim,” he said.

Ms Palaszczuk accused Mr Springborg of having a part in the spread of the allegations against her government MPs.

“Get out of the gutter because Queenslanders don’t expect that,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“He (Springborg) said it was going to be a different way of being in Opposition.

“Well it’s the lowest of low … and it’s disgusting and it’s absolutely deplorable.”