By Rachel Eddie and Annika Smethurst
The high-stakes legal battle between ousted Liberal Moira Deeming and Opposition Leader John Pesutto is set to begin on Monday, as almost half of polled voters say the party was right to take some form of action against her.
Deeming will be the first witness called in the Federal Court defamation trial on Monday, set to run over three weeks and tipped to be a test of party stability and Pesutto’s leadership.
Opposition Leader John Pesutto and MP Moira Deeming.Credit: Darrian Traynor
The Age on Friday obtained hundreds of messages between Deeming, press gallery journalists, British anti-trans rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and Sky News host Peta Credlin.
The 30 pages of text messages reveal Credlin, a chief of staff to former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, offered her views on how to influence a party room vote, which MPs could be turned, and how to media-manage the saga.
Other messages show Deeming claimed to be receiving support from federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and appeared to show Abbott working as a conduit between Deeming and Pesutto.
It will be a ‘shambolic mess’.
An MP on the condition of anonymity
A number of senior state Liberal MPs are expected to take the stand, both for and against their leader, including David Southwick, Georgie Crozier, Kim Wells and Richard Riordan. Former deputy leader Matt Bach has been ordered to fly in from the UK for his evidence.
It will be a “shambolic mess”, one MP said on condition of anonymity to be frank about internal issues.
The case was sparked by the Let Women Speak rally in March 2023 which Deeming helped organise and which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
Pesutto and the leadership team had sought to expel her from the party room, but she was instead suspended for nine months in a last-minute compromise. Deeming was ultimately expelled in May 2023 after threatening to bring in lawyers, but remains on the crossbench in the upper house.
Deeming alleges Pesutto defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser, which he rejects.
Supporters insist Pesutto will survive as leader, particularly given that the opposition has made good ground in the polls, but many, particularly MPs from the party’s conservative wing, believe the trial will make his leadership untenable.
An exclusive survey conducted this month by Resolve Strategic for The Age shows almost half – 47 per cent – of voters supported the party room taking some action against the upper house MP. However, about one-third said they weren’t sure or didn’t care what treatment Deeming received.
The findings are similar to the Resolve survey from April 2023, shortly after she was suspended from the parliamentary Liberal Party, but before the party room expelled her. The fresh results, based on the survey of 552 people, are slightly less favourable for Deeming than they were.
In April last year, 20 per cent of respondents said she deserved lighter punishment than her suspension. More than a year since her expulsion, that figure has dropped to 16 per cent of people who now say no action or less action should have been taken against her.
Fourteen per cent said she deserved to be suspended only, and 8 per cent said her expulsion from the party room was the appropriate course of action.
A quarter believed she should have been treated more harshly and should have been expelled from the Victorian Parliament. Such extreme powers against an elected member of parliament are rarely used.
Labor voters (43 per cent) were more likely than Coalition voters (26 per cent) to say they were not fazed. Of the Coalition voters surveyed, 18 per cent said they believed no action or less action should have been taken, 27 per cent said she should have been expelled from parliament, and 12 per cent said the party was right to remove her permanently from the party room.
Monash University politics lecturer Dr Zareh Ghazarian said the issue doesn’t concern most voters, who won’t respond well to the party focusing on internal issues.
“This will derail the party’s strategy. The case will take the pressure off Labor. It’s a political pressure valve,” Ghazarian said.
Resolve director Jim Reed said most voters in Victoria had never heard of Deeming.
“When we prompt people to think about it, they’re still split between her expulsion and taking no action at all, and it’s clearly done no lasting damage to the Liberals’ vote.”
Pesutto has been climbing in the polls as Premier Jacinta Allan approaches one year in the top job. The Coalition’s primary vote, according to the Resolve survey, is 37 per cent – 10 percentage points clear of Labor at 27 per cent.
Although the survey does not include a two-party preferred result, it would likely be a close contest if an election were held today because Labor usually benefits from preference flows.
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