‘Abbott even told me he’d sue’: Deeming texts on support from senior Liberals

Ousted Liberal Moira Deeming claimed she was receiving support from senior federal Liberals, including Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, in her fight against Victorian leader John Pesutto, a trove of text messages and emails show.

This masthead obtained hundreds of messages late on Friday before Deeming and Pesutto face off for the first day of a high-stakes three-week defamation trial in the Federal Court beginning on Monday.

Moira Deeming (in white) sitting on the crossbench in June.Credit: Joe Armao

They include months of messages between Deeming and journalists, including those from The Age, Herald Sun, the ABC, Guardian Australia and The Australian, as well as UK anti-trans rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and political commentator and former chief of staff to Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin.

The exchanges appeared to show Abbott had been working as a conduit, via Credlin, between Deeming and Pesutto. Abbott reiterated on Saturday his lament that Deeming was “unfairly excluded in the first place”, but otherwise declined to comment.

In a further exchange on WhatsApp in May 2023, a journalist at the Herald Sun asked if it was true Dutton had offered her support and was trying to figure out a compromise that would not land the state Liberal Party in court.

Deeming said this was true: “Everyone on the planet except the [state Liberal] leadership & [state Liberal MP James] Newbury can see this is a disaster.”

The “disaster” began 18 months ago when Deeming, then a state Liberal MP, helped organise the Let Women Speak rally on the steps of the Victorian Parliament. The event was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

Pesutto moved to expel her from the party room the day before early voting opened for the crucial byelection in the federal seat of Aston, which the Liberals went on to lose.

Deeming was instead suspended for nine months in a last-minute compromise, and was expelled in May last year after threatening to bring in lawyers. She remains a crossbench MP in the Victorian upper house and a broader member of the Liberal Party.

Federal Liberals have long said they were blindsided by the expulsion push, blamed it for the Aston loss and viewed Pesutto’s handling of Deeming as politically naive.

“For the fed MPs, I’d take huge hits. They’ve been good to me,” Deeming said in a May 5, 2023, message.

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

A Liberal source who was close to Dutton at the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal party matters, disputed that Deeming had Dutton’s support, even if he did not back Pesutto’s handling of the matter.

Dutton had publicly said as much, saying the distraction had derailed the state team’s attempts to be an effective opposition.

“The whole mess needs to be sorted out sooner than later, and it needs to be mediated as a matter of urgency so that the Liberal Party can get back to its core business,” he told ABC Radio National in a May 5, 2023, interview.

He went on to say that Pesutto of course had his support as Victorian party leader.

A trove of correspondence shows Dutton had asked Pesutto to stop discussing Deeming publicly in the days before the Aston byelection.

“I’ve had a request from Peter Dutton that we don’t do any more media on Moira,” Pesutto said in a text message.

Thirty pages of screenshots of texts between Deeming and Credlin revealed the Sky News anchor had been coaching Deeming through the saga.

Deeming in one text message claimed Abbott had told her he would sue.

“It’s been 6 weeks of defamation. Tony Abbott even told me he’d sue if it were him,” Deeming told Credlin on May 3, 2023.

Two days later, Deeming says Abbott had now told her not to. By this point, Deeming’s supporters feared legal action would be used as justification to expel her from the party room. It was, and she was removed days later.

Credlin had earlier told Deeming that the “former PM who is very popular with the base is in your corner”.

Abbott had always publicly stated his support for Deeming. Deeming had said and done “absolutely nothing that should be undoable and unsayable by Liberals”, he told Credlin’s Sky News program last May.

Credlin reworded one of Deeming’s statements to the party room for her, and offered her a “friendly interview” with approved questions to avoid damaging the Liberal Party’s chances in the Aston byelection.

“I am not interested in damaging our chances in Aston as it would damage Dutton and he’s a mate of mine,” Credlin said.

A handful of state and federal MPs, Abbott and party headquarters had all been working to broker a solution for Deeming.

One option considered and favoured by federal Liberals, as this masthead reported last year, was to appoint party elders to oversee Deeming’s re-entry into the party room as part of a probation period to return to the opposition benches.

Victorian senator Sarah Henderson has also written an affidavit supporting Deeming.

However, Deeming has bled support from some sympathetic Liberals as the saga drags on. It could still be a distraction during the federal election, due by May, given the Federal Court of Victoria’s judgment may not land until next year when campaigning will be under way.

Deeming alleges Pesutto defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser, which Pesutto rejects.

Dutton’s office was contacted for comment. Pesutto’s office declined to comment on Friday while the matter was before the courts.

The state opposition leader settled separate defamation action launched against him by activists Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and Angela Jones, who played leading roles in the rally.

Exchanges on the social media site X between Deeming and Keen-Minshull show the UK anti-trans rights activist said Deeming was a “future Australian PM”.

“Use your beauty to your advantage, it will protect you on the days you feel like crap and it will drive men who want to bring you down crazy. Plus looking like a goddess will make you media friendly!”

Deeming had also raised concerns for her safety with the deputy clerk of the Legislative Council and with parliamentary security about threats she had received.

The Department of Premier and Cabinet, which handles residential security arrangements for ministers and some MPs in exceptions, had also reached out to her to offer a police assessment.

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