Moira Deeming says she was in a ‘fight to the death’ with John Pesutto
In an extraordinary affidavit, Moira Deeming says she believed John Pesutto and David Southwick “set out to damage and utterly destroy me” after a controversial women’s rally.
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Exiled Liberal MP Moira Deeming believed she’d entered a “fight to the death” with Opposition Leader John Pesutto and that “either I would be finished or Mr Pesutto would be” after she was “tarred with the Nazi brush”.
In an extraordinary affidavit submitted to her defamation trial against Mr Pesutto, Mrs Deeming said she believed her former boss and David Southwick MP “set out to damage and utterly destroy me” after a controversial women’s rally she helped organise was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
The ousted MP said a week after the March 18, 2023 Let Women Speak rally that Nazis attended and performed salutes on the steps of Parliament at, it was suggested she accept a nine-month suspension to “save” her leader.
During a party room meeting to vote on a motion to expel her from the party on March 27, Mrs Deeming said Kim Wells MP told her a suspension “was the only way to save both me and Mr Pesutto”.
“He said that, to get my exoneration, I had to save Mr Pesutto’s leadership and this required me to “take a hit” (or words to that effect),” she said in court documents.
“He said it was the best deal I was ever going to get and that in his whole career he had never seen anyone defeat a disciplinary motion like this.”
The “deal” came after Nick McGowan MP told the partyroom meeting if Mrs Deeming were expelled “the party would be labelling me (Mrs Deeming) as a Nazi, which he said is like calling someone a murderer, a rapist or a paedophile”.
Before the motion to expel meeting, Mrs Deeming claimed the Liberal leadership had made calls telling MPs she’d “organised a Nazi event and had been drinking and hanging out with Nazis, and partying with them, and that they had the evidence to prove it”.
“I knew there was no road back after this - either I would be finished or Mr Pesutto would be,” Mrs Deeming said in court documents.
“It felt like it was now a fight to the death ... when I found out about these calls, I felt that Mr Pesutto and Mr Southwick had never had any intention of seeking a resolution. They had set out to damage and utterly destroy me from the very outset.”
She told the court she felt Mr Pesutto and his leadership team “did not see me as a human but rather as some sort of political unit”.
“I wondered what sort of monsters they were, who didn’t care about me but only about the political career of the leader of the party. They seemed not to care about justice, or the truth.”
“I couldn’t understand why (Mr Pesutto) would hate me so much to be doing this. I thought he was intent on ruining me and my career at all costs - no matter if I was innocent or what it would do to my innocent children.”
Mrs Deeming said following publications linking her to Nazism, “it was like I was radioactive”.
Colleagues would “cross to the other side of the hallway” to avoid speaking to her, and other people at Parliament “would avoid making eye contact with me.
She said she “withdrew into myself”, was scared to go out in public with her children because they “might get hurt or spat on”, stopped eating, developed “terrible headaches” and began subconsciously clenching her jaw and fists, causing her to wake from sleep “with nail marks in my palms”.
Mrs Deeming said she lost her “sense of connection with everyone in my life, even my husband and children and my closest friends”.
“The experience of extreme stress and anxiety, of isolation and powerlessness that swept over me, has never eased.”
She said she decided to sue Mr Pesutto for defamation “to seek to restore my reputation”, despite the ongoing “harm that my family and I are suffering”.
“I could not allow (the Liberal Party) to destroy my family name and force my children to live under the smear of Nazism,” she said in court documents.
“I thought it was the kind of thing you could not allow to happen to your worst enemy, let alone your own children. I felt driven to fix this for everyone. I was so ashamed that it was my party that did this to them. It made me feel sick to be part of a team with people in it who would do this to innocent people.”
The Federal Court hearing continues.
Deeming decided to sue day after rally
Ousted Liberal MP Moira Deeming decided “100 per cent” to sue Opposition Leader John Pesutto for defamation the day after she attended a controversial rally gatecrashed by saluting Nazis.
Her admission came as she was grilled by Mr Pesutto’s barrister on Thursday in her high-profile Federal Court trial, with Liberal MPs Renee Heath, Richard Riordan and David Hodgett to enter the witness box on Friday.
Mrs Deeming took the stand for the third day, where she contradicted a May 2023 public statement that she “never once considered suing the Liberal Party”.
Instead, she confirmed that as early as March 19, that year — the day after Nazis stormed the Let Women Speak rally she helped organise — she contacted lawyers and planned to sue Mr Pesutto.
Her decision came after the opposition leader issued a media release where he moved her expulsion from the party for “associating with people whose views are abhorrent to my values”.
“The minute Mr Pesutto put out that media release on the 19th, if he did not retract that, I was 100 per cent going to sue him for defamation,” Mrs Deeming said.
“What I wanted more than anything else on the planet was a full exoneration of everything that he had implied and led people to believe about me having some kind of link with Nazis.
“All of that needed to be retracted, withdrawn on official Liberal Party letterhead by Mr Pesutto because he was the one that said it, that is what I wanted.
“I wanted to fix it for the Liberal Party and stay as part of the team if possible.
“What I wanted above all was all of those things retracted, he needed to do that.”
Mr Pesutto denies that he defamed Mrs Deeming.
Mrs Deeming said she understood upon agreeing to a nine-month suspension from the party on March 27 that she would issue a joint statement with Mr Pesutto.
She held that belief based on conversations with MPs David Southwick, Kim Wells, David Hodgett and former minister Ryan Smith, who she thought were speaking for the leader.
But instead, only a statement from her was released without Mr Pesutto’s “half”.
Mr Pesutto’s barrister Dr Matt Collins KC AM said “that’s the central flaw isn’t it, in your entire theory” that she had a misunderstanding based on what others told her.
“I regret very much trusting those people,” she said.
She told the court Mr Pesutto had “refused to speak to me or respond to any of my messages ever again” after her suspension from the party on March 27.
Earlier in that party room meeting, before a “compromise” on an expulsion motion was reduced to a suspension, Mrs Deeming said she delivered a speech where she “revealed some intensely personal matters”.
The party room passed a motion to release a statement that “no-one ever called her a Nazi” as part of her suspension.
“I objected and said, ‘Yes you did call me a Nazi’,” Mrs Deeming said.
“Kim Wells told me to be quiet and respect my leader, which was devastating and I just stopped entirely.”
Mrs Deeming said she “stormed out” of the meeting after being shown the first draft of a public statement to be attributed to her before she returned “to negotiate” agreed wording.
“I was devastated they had tricked me,” she said.
Dr Collins said “before the ink was dry” on her suspension on March 27, Mrs Deeming texted Sky News host and former political adviser Peta Credlin stating, “I’m moving to defamation”, declaring her intentions to take legal action.
“I would have been expelled if they didn’t offer me a full exoneration,” Mrs Deeming replied.
She was expelled just over a month later, on May 12.
Taken to the day of the controversial women’s rights protest on March 18, where 20 men wearing black lined up on the steps of parliament and performed repeated Nazi salutes with the banner “destroy paedo freaks”, Mrs Deeming said, “I couldn’t believe it.”
“It was very difficult for me to conceive of the fact there were actual real Nazis in Melbourne in 2023, it was so shocking.”
Mrs Deeming confirmed she still associated with Let Women Speak rally organisers Angie Jones, who had twice attended the trial, and British anti-transgender rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen, who had sent her an encouraging text message on Wednesday night.
Dr Collins completed his three-day grilling of Mrs Deeming on Thursday, but she will remain on the stand for re-examination by her barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC on Friday.
Presbyterian minister Christopher Duke, an expert witness and MPs Renee Heath, Richard Riordan and David Hodgett will then enter the witness box.
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