In a stunning vindication, conservative Victorian MP Moira Deeming has won her defamation case against state Liberal leader John Pesutto.
Judge David O’Callaghan, delivering his judgment in the blockbuster Federal Court case this morning, awarded Ms Deeming $300,000 in damages.
Ms Deeming, an independent MP since her expulsion from the Liberal Party room, sued Mr Pesutto over allegations that he falsely portrayed her as a Nazi sympathiser after she helped organise and attended a Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
The judgment found that Pesutto defamed Deeming five times: in a media release stating she was unfit to be in the Victorian parliamentary Liberal Party because she knowingly associates with neo-Nazis, in two subsequent radio interviews repeating the same claims and at a press conference accusing Deeming and Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull of promoting an ‘odious Nazi agenda and white supremacist views.
The final defamation was in the form of a dossier tendered at an expulsion, repeating the above accusations.
There are a number of immediately obvious outcomes of the case. Firstly, Pesutto not only defamed Deeming: he sacked her from the Liberal Party on false grounds.
Secondly, Deeming and other Let Women Speak activists, including Keen-Minshull, have been falsely smeared by transgender activists as ‘Nazi sympathisers’ and ‘white supremacists’. Anyone repeating these slanders now potentially faces the same defamation action.
The case establishes a precedent that anyone accusing Deeming, Keen-Minshull and Let Women Speak, of being ‘Nazis’ and ‘white supremacists’ is open to similar defamation action.
Finally, John Pesutto’s leadership – and by extension, the dominance of his fellow ‘moderates’ – is well and truly toasted.
John Pesutto has had a terrible day in court and the Victorian Liberal Party is again neck deep in crisis.
Pesutto’s supporters have been arguing privately that his leadership could sustain anything less than a catastrophic judgment.
A straight sets loss of this magnitude is a terrific repudiation of his political and legal judgment.
He is both a lawyer and a politician and he has failed on both fronts.
That’s because, like all so-called ‘moderates’ who’ve been a cancer in the Liberal Party for years, Pesutto is a dripping wet, wannabe Green, with no real conservative convictions. He is emblematic of the wokesters who’ve been alienating the Liberals’ centre-right base for a decade and more.
Hopefully Pesutto’s imminent demise is a sign of a clearing-out of the Victorian state branch to come.
Which may be a fool’s hope.
There have been three Liberal leaders (one with two goes) since Labor won in 2014, so really the next would mark leadership term number five.
But commonsense and the Victorian Libs aren’t often words that sit well in the same sentence […]
If Pesutto vacates his seat or he is pushed, Victorians will be looking for a safe pair of hands, not a leader running around with a disco ball in one hand and a set of steak knives in another.
The most likely contenders for the next leader are frontbenchers Brad Battin, James Newbury and Sam Groth, which suggests the Victorian Liberals have learned nothing.
At least two of those would be nothing more than a continuation of the same woke bullshit that’s condemned the party to over a decade in opposition. Former tennis star Groth at least vocally opposed lockdowns when every other politician was cowering behind Dictator Dan’s ‘Ring of Steel’ longest lockdowns in the world.
Moira Deeming publicly thanked God for her vindication. Well may God help Deeming, because it seems that nothing will help the Victorian Liberals.
