James Campbell: John Pesutto is finished as Liberal leader

If a screenwriter had sat in a room for a week trying to think of the worst possible scenario for John Pesutto, they’d have struggled to come up with a fiasco bigger than this.

John Pesutto is finished as Liberal leader.

That is the consensus across the Liberal Party after the tied vote in Friday’s party room meeting.

Seriously, if you had sat in a room for a week trying to think of the worst outcome, you’d have struggled to come up with a fiasco as big as this.

That’s because common sense should have made it clear that if the numbers were tied, the only decent thing for Pesutto to do was to use his casting vote against himself.

Had he done so, he’d have had to wear the humiliation of having lost.

But he could have walked out to face the media knowing the matter was finally resolved and that for now anyway, he is safe in the job to which he is so desperate to cling.

Instead he stood there wittering like a fool denying the obvious – that he had voted twice to save himself – by claiming the parliamentary party’s constitution required an absolute majority.

Thanks to Pesutto’s actions, the Deeming affair is now destined to roll into its third year. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Readers, I have to tell you the document to which he refers carries little weight.

To give you an idea of how little, consider the fact it is meant to ensure members of the party’s front bench are elected by the party room.

That hasn’t happened since Jeff Kennett was leader.

Thanks to its MPs’ inability to resolve this fight, the Deeming affair is now destined to roll on into its third year.

Jacinta Allan and her ministers cannot believe their luck.

“Unsustainable” was the succinct reaction of more than one Liberal MP after the meeting.

Pesutto has been offered many off-ramps in the past two years that would have ended this matter but it appears he is determined to keep driving past them.

Why he has not simply accepted that in this matter the judge’s word was final is completely mysterious.

Why he is clinging so desperately to his job is alas, less mysterious.

John Pesutto fronts the media after the vote. Picture: Wayne Taylor

On Thursday, the costs order made by Justice David O’Callaghan was made public.

It shows that His Honour has ordered Pesutto to pay Deeming’s legal bills on an indemnity basis for everything she has incurred since last February.

On top of that he has to find the money to pay his own lawyers and the $315,000 he has been ordered to pay Deeming in damages.

With Deeming’s supporters saying her bills are likely to run close to $3 million, it is hard to see how Pesutto could be up for anything less than $4 million and probably a great deal more.

It is understatement to say his chances of finding benefactors prepared to put their hands in their pocket to get him out of this mess will be greatly improved if he retains the leadership of the Liberal Party.

And if he can’t pay these bills, what then?

A bankrupt can’t sit in the Victorian parliament so the Liberals would face the prospect of a by-election in the ultra-marginal seat of Hawthorn.

It’s a mess and it ain’t over yet. Not even close.

Originally published as James Campbell: John Pesutto is finished as Liberal leader