James Campbell: Deeming/Pesutto trial on road to who knows where

If Moira Deeming is the anti-trans movement’s main weapon in Victorian politics, we might as well start putting our preferred pronouns on the bottom of our emails right now.

At last a break for Team Pesutto!

Day 3 of the Deeming versus Pesutto began with good news for the Opposition Leader and his deputy David Southwick.

On Monday afternoon Team Deeming had asked Justice David O’Callaghan if they could subpoena Southwick to get him to hand over any other recordings he might have made of his colleagues without their knowledge.

Luckily Southwick will be spared this embarrassment as the judge refused the application.

Not that this is going to be the end of this matter, I suspect.

Already they are muttering he better have a good reason for secretly recording the meeting between Deeming and the leadership the day after last March’s Let Women Speak rally.

After that it was straight back to business with Pesutto’s barrister, Matt Collins, continuing his cross-examination of Deeming, who it has to be said is not all she could be as a witness.

Asked to agree with facts, which after all this time she must be well acquainted, it was difficult to decide if she was simply bewildered or being deliberately obtuse.

Either way it was difficult to avoid the suspicion that she might be as thick as a post.

Day three of the trial began with some good news for Team Pesutto. Picture: David Crosling

In which case, if she’s the anti-trans movement’s main weapon in Victorian politics then we might as well start putting our preferred pronouns on the bottom of our emails right now.

What exactly Collins will be seeking to argue in the days ahead is hard to see at the moment as respondents in Federal Court cases don’t outline their cases in opening statements as the plaintiffs do.

But from the questions he has asked it seems clear he is seeking to build a case that Deeming concealed the depth of her involvement in the organisation of the rally, asking among things why she had not told her leader or any other MP that she had booked the use of the steps of parliament for it and had planned to host the speakers back at Parliament House afterwards.

The Court was then taken back to the day itself, as over the next couple of hours Collins took Deeming through footage shot on the day.

And this is when it got interesting and revealed the gulf in the world views that is at the heart of this case.

Running through the footage, Collins paused to ask Deeming whether she agreed that statements made by the speakers could be considered controversial.

Moira Deeming endured her second day on the witness stand. Picture: David Crosling

He was particularly exercised by activist Kellie-Jay Keen’s statement to the crowd: “No man has a vagina. No woman has a penis. There is no such thing as non-binary and transitioning children is profound abuse.”

“Do you agree that was a further provocation by Mrs Keen?” he asked.

Did Deeming agree with the sentiments she expressed?

“You don’t agree they are provocative and controversial things to say at a rally at which there are counter protesters?” he added.

Perhaps, moving in the elevated circles that he does, Dr Matt Collins AM KC, may well feel these views are indeed provocative, but in other places, that is to say most of Australia, I suspect they are mainstream.

Moreover if you can’t express them at a rally devoted to the rights of biological women, where can you express them?

Nor is it clear yet, given it was a rally devoted to supporting those views, why the speakers should have failed to express them just because there were counter protesters.

We’ll find out where he is going with this in the coming days.

But already it’s pretty clear he’s got his work cut out for him.

At one point Justice O’Callaghan made clear just how unfamiliar territory all this is to him by asking what exactly is a TERF.

Originally published as James Campbell: Deeming/Pesutto trial on road to who knows where