Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto was allowed to smile for about five minutes after a modest portion of the swing against Labor went to the Liberals in the weekend’s Mulgrave by-election. This morning Liberal-turned-independent Moira Deeming announced her formal intention to take Pesutto to court for defamation.
Deeming, who insisted that “not a dollar” in party or taxpayer funds would be spent on her lawsuit, launched a fundraiser for the action in late September.
The suit traces back to Deeming attending an anti-trans-rights rally in March that was also attended by neo-Nazis. Pesutto immediately announced he had discussed with Deeming her part in “organising, promoting and participating in a rally with speakers and other organisers who themselves have been publicly associated with far right-wing extremist groups including neo-Nazi activists”.
“At our meeting I informed Ms Deeming that I will move a motion at the next partyroom meeting to expel her as a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party as her position is untenable,” he said at the time. But Deeming insisted: “Nobody endorsed those Nazis. We all condemned them. But nobody listened to what the women actually said.” She survived the attempt to expel her, albeit with a nine-month suspension.
She has since issued several defamation concerns notices to Pesutto, alleging he publicly accused her of being a Nazi sympathiser — Pesutto has denied either accusing Deeming of being a Nazi or of having Nazi sympathies. It was this ongoing threat of legal action that eventually resulted in Deeming being expelled from the partyroom, at which point Pesutto said he couldn’t see Deeming ever returning.
An unspoken clause in that sentence may have been “under my leadership”. Indeed, while the expulsion motion was put forward by five MPs — Roma Britnell, Wayne Farnham, Matthew Guy, Cindy McLeish and James Newbury — Deeming remains a member of the broader party, and condemnation from Liberal circles is by no means universal.
For one thing, there are the 11 MPs who opposed the expulsion motion. And at the federal level, Senator Sarah Henderson, who lobbied on Deeming’s behalf in March, took time out from an address at a Liberal Party event earlier this year to address Deeming, who was in the audience, calling her expulsion from the party an “abomination”: “You did nothing wrong, you did nothing wrong.”
Indeed Deeming’s welcome appearances at various Liberal Party events throughout the year show the conflict has not been the slam dunk Pesutto might have hoped for.
The Victorian Libs are in the midst of a burst of activity, as if fearing the loss of their unique talent for calamity and internal ructions. The Pesutto-Deeming matter is the second defamation case concerning the party. Senior Liberals are trying to find out who was behind the now-defunct “salacious” gossip site Real Freedom News.
If this ongoing drama does do Pesutto’s leadership in, one wonders who the hell would apply to replace him and inherit a collection of headaches that could single-handedly keep Nurofen in business for generations.
Pesutto and Deeming were both approached for comment.
