Rita Panahi: John Pesutto has behaved in a dishonourable manner in Moira Deeming debate

Politically impotent opposition leader John Pesutto has opted to be Daniel Andrews’ useful idiot when it comes to attacking Moira Deeming.

The question isn’t whether Moira Deeming is fit to sit in the parliamentary Liberal Party, it’s whether John Pesutto is fit to lead it. It’s one thing to be politically impotent but quite another to be obtuse and unprincipled.

The opposition leader has never laid a glove on the Andrews government, even in the weeks when the premier was mired in multiple scandals, from the outgoing IBAC commissioner accusing his government of revenge attacks, to yet another corruption crisis involving the public service, to a bombshell report revealing state Labor used taxpayer funds to monitor Andrews’ personal popularity during the state’s six lockdowns.

Moira Deeming has come under attack from John Pesutto. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

But being hopelessly ineffective is nothing compared to the deeply dishonourable manner in which Pesutto has behaved in recent days in attacking and defaming a first term MP, Moira Deeming, after she was verbally and physically attacked at a “Let Women Speak” rally on the steps of Parliament House.

Instead of calling out the premier’s cynical tactics of blaming women for the actions of around 20 Nazi morons, or condemning the far Left activists engaging in violence that saw several women injured, Pesutto opted to be Dan’s and the media’s useful idiot. He accused Deeming of supposedly being connected to women who were connected to others who interviewed white supremacists.

It’s an absurd accusation that appears to be based largely on false information from a Wikipedia page.

Pesutto accused Deeming of supposedly being connected to women who were connected to others who interviewed white supremacists. Picture: David Crosling

Little wonder that Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price publicly slammed the Victorian Liberal leader: “If John Pesutto throws Moira Deeming under the bus he will have trampled on the rights of women! Standing with Moira were Jewish women, Muslim women and women from all political persuasions! To trample women’s rights by calling women Nazis who are not is not leadership!”

Indigenous leader and former Labor Party national president Warren Mundine called the opposition leader “gutless” and incapable of leading the Liberals to victory. “This is a continuation of the Liberal leadership that has been so pathetic over the years … he (Pesutto) is completely hopeless,” Mundine told me on Sky News.

“If I was Moira I’d sue him for defamation. (Pesutto) needs to get a backbone and stand up for liberal values … the women did nothing wrong … The sooner they get rid of him the better chance they’ll have of an election victory.”

But we must not forget the bulk of the media in this affair who have outdone themselves in gaslighting the public.