In their desperation to avoid a by-election, the Victorian Liberals may well have lost next year’s state election. In a move of suicidal stupidity, the party’s backroom chiefs have decided to cut their own throats and bail out the late, loathed, leader, John Pesutto.
John Pesutto has been thrown a $1.5m lifeline by Victorian Liberal chiefs who tonight voted in favour of the deal that will save his political career and prevent a potentially damaging by-election.
Are they completely insane?
Pesutto was facing bankruptcy – and consequently enforced resignation from parliament – entirely because of his own political cowardice and obstinate stupidity. Pesutto brought the narrowly avoided bankruptcy entirely on himself when he repeatedly slandered one of his own MPs, Moira Deeming, as a ‘Nazi sympathiser’ and ‘white supremacist’, after Deeming helped organise and attended a Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Not content with slandering her, Pesutto forced her out of the party.
Despite being given every opportunity to retract the slander and reinstate Deeming, Pesutto refused. The result was a defamation trial that could have been avoided at any time. Pesutto lost the case and Deeming successfully demanded he repay her legal costs of $1.5 million.
Yet the party has been determined to save this obvious fool from the entirely avoidable consequences of his own actions, all because they’re terrified of losing a by-election in his wealthy seat of Hawthorn. But have they saved the seat only to lose any chance of returning to government?
You know things are dire for the Liberals when they’re talking up returning woke Matthew Guy to the leadership.
Some Liberals have already started talking up Matthew Guy returning to the leadership for a third attempt at winning an election (echoing Jeff Kennett, who lost elections in 1985 and 1988, but won in 1992).
Except that Kennett, to damn him with faint praise, had no shortage of political mongrel. Matthew Guy as opposition leader was like flogging ‘Dictator Dan’ Andrews with a limp lettuce leaf.
Still, have the Victorian Liberals really thrown away their re-election chances? It’s 18 months, after all, till the next state election. That’s an aeon in politics.
Clearly, new leader Brad Battin is hoping it will all just die away by then, and that keeping himself as far from the fray as possible is the wisest course.
By picking his way through the Deeming-Pesutto minefield by not taking a strong public position on the proposed bailout, Brad Battin hopes to avoid political wounds.
In one sense, Battin’s decision to say as little as possible about the $1.5m lifeline to save John Pesutto – and the party from a potentially damaging by-election – is understandable.
Presumably, Battin would prefer to see the bailout get the greenlight. It’s certainly in the interests of his six-month-old leadership to avoid a by-election in Hawthorn.
But if he publicly aligns himself with the seven-figure rescue deal he risks alienating the pro-Moira Deeming MPs who helped vote him into the leadership. But this is the Victorian Liberal Party and sitting in no-man’s land also carries political risks.
In doing so, Battin has managed to infuriate pro-Pesutto figures in the party room, on the administrative committee and in the broader Liberal movement who support saving the ex-opposition leader.
So by saying as little as possible, Battin still finds himself bleeding; the question is whether the events of Thursday night will staunch the flow or turn it into a haemorrhage.
Which all depends on two things.
First, just how much fury is left in a woman scorned. Either Deeming can take the money, pay off the debt the defamation action cost her and leave it at that, or she can continue to lash the party for even backing Pesutto in the first place – and, by proxy, the wet ‘moderate’ faction that has done so much damage to its electability. She certainly wouldn’t be in the wrong to do so.
Which brings us to the second point: are the Victorian Liberals ready to admit that the ‘moderates’ have been a political disaster? If they can’t put the ‘moderates’ back in their soggy little box, and go back to being an actual centre-right, small ‘c’ conservative party, they’ll only consign themselves to oblivion.
After all, why would anyone vote for a weak imitation green-left party when they can elect the real thing?
