A SYDNEY barrister, David Patch, has corroborated a woman's claim that Tony Abbott behaved in an intimidatory fashion when she beat him in a vote for Sydney University Student Representative Council president in 1977.

Mr Abbott has denied the account from Barbara Ramjan - published in David Marr's Quarterly Essay, ''Political Animal: The Making of Tony Abbott'' - that he came within an inch of her nose and punched the wall on either side of her head.

But Mr Patch, who won the SRC presidency in 1975, said he had been Ms Ramjan's campaign manager in 1977, and she had told him about the Abbott incident immediately after it happened.

He writes in today's Age: ''I did not see the incident, but I was nearby. The count had just finished. Barbara found me. She is a small woman, and Tony Abbott was (and is) a strong man. She was very shaken, scared and angry. She told me that Tony Abbott had come up to her, put his face in her face, and punched the wall on either side of her head.