Why is Moira Deeming still even in the Liberal Party? Given the way the party has treated her for the past couple of years, and its trajectory from one weak wet ‘moderate’ leader to another, more and more people are asking why the actual-conservative conservative doesn’t jump ship to One Nation.
Or is she only sticking around to blow the party up?
Prominent Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming has accused former opposition leader Matthew Guy of physically assaulting her – creating internal chaos for current leader Jess Wilson as she campaigns ahead of the November state election.
Matthew Guy has vehemently denied Ms Deeming’s allegations.
Polling for the imminent state election shows One Nation drawing level with both Labor and the Liberals. The once-mighty Victorian Liberals, who once ruled the state for an unbroken 26 years, is a hollowed-out shell, captured by inner-city moderates who chase green votes while the suburban base walks. In the last decade they have lost repeatedly to a Labor government that has plunged the state into record debt and dysfunction. Yet the moderates cling to power, purging anyone who actually believes what the party once stood for.
The alleged incident occurred at the Macedonian Orthodox Youth of Australia 20th anniversary gala dinner at a western suburbs reception centre on May 23, and was reported to police by Ms Deeming on June 16.
Video footage of the event is of poor quality, so it once again comes down to he-said-she-said. Deeming says Guy grabbed her by the back of the head in a headlock when she leaned in to hear him over loud music. “Suddenly I felt like someone smashed me in the base of my skull with a wine bottle – but it was Matthew Guy grabbing me violently in some kind of head lock.” Guy vehemently denies it.
Police are investigating. Current leader Jess Wilson is wisely taking the ‘matter before police, no comment’ line. To be fair, she couldn’t feasibly do anything else.
But this is not some isolated spat. It comes after years of the party machine treating Deeming as toxic for daring to defend women’s spaces and biological reality. Former leader John Pesutto branded her a Nazi and white supremacist for speaking at a Let Women Speak rally. She sued, won and the party responded by trying to raid its own funds to pay Pesutto’s costs so he would not go bankrupt and lose his seat. They then tried to install an Indian migrant in her own preselection – until he was forced to resign over links to a convicted sex offender.
Now Deeming’s close ally has quit the party, allegedly One Nation-bound.
Influential Liberal Party member Colleen Harkin has quit the party amid speculation she could join One Nation.
Ms Harkin, who has sat on the state executive, submitted her resignation to the Liberal Party’s Victorian division on Sunday.
From the conservative wing of the party, Ms Harkin has battled internal opponents for years and headed the legal action against the division for giving a $1.55m loan to former leader John Pesutto.
She has been a vocal supporter in the party for upper house MP Moira Deeming.
Insiders are already tipping she will join One Nation. That would be just the latest defection as conservative voters desert the Liberals for Pauline Hanson’s party.
The Victorian Liberals’ ‘moderate’ experiment has been a disaster. They shed core voters, embraced the rainbow agenda, mass immigration, soft-on-crime policies and net-zero fantasies… then wondered why the base preferred One Nation. A party that once represented aspiration now looks like a pale blue-green imitation of Labor. Jess Wilson’s kitchen-table plea to bring back Brian Loughnane was an admission of failure, not renewal.
So why does Deeming stay? Is she trying to blow the party up from the inside and clear the path for One Nation? Or is she simply waiting for the inevitable collapse while the moderates keep pretending the base will come home?
The Liberals left their conservative voters long ago. Deeming has every reason to leave them behind. The only question left is whether she jumps before the whole rotten structure finally caves in.
