‘My biggest fans are gay people and trans people’: New secret recording aired in Deeming case

Moira Deeming secretly recorded an internal meeting with senior Liberals during which she denied she was transphobic or homophobic and asked party leaders to launch a “full-fronted” attack on those criticising her.

It is the second covert tape to be unearthed and aired in the Federal Court during the defamation case state MP Deeming launched against Opposition Leader John Pesutto.

Moira Deeming arriving at court on Thursday.Credit: Joe Armao

Deeming helped organise the Let Women Speak rally on March 18, 2023. Neo-Nazis were among several groups of protesters that arrived that day.

Pesutto moved to expel her from the parliamentary Liberal Party in the days afterwards. Deeming alleges Pesutto defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser, which he rejects.

A month before the rally, Pesutto and upper house opposition leader Georgie Crozier had a meeting with Deeming to ask her to put her views without becoming a distraction or derailing the opposition. Deeming secretly recorded the meeting, the court heard.

“My biggest fans are gay people and trans people,” Deeming said in the February 23, 2023, meeting played to the court. “I could get a row of lesbians to stand around you at a press conference and back you up.”

Georgie Crozier arrives at court on Thursday.Credit: Joe Armao

The meeting came in the days after Deeming gave her maiden speech to parliament, in which she slammed “equality taken to extremes”, and after her emails during her time at Melton City Council were released under freedom-of-information laws. The court heard the emails were characterised in the media and by politicians including then-premier Daniel Andrews as anti-trans and anti-abortion, which Deeming rejects.

Pesutto, in audio played to the court on day 13 of the defamation trial, could be heard opening the meeting by saying, “We’ve got a huge problem.”

He said he was going to be torn to shreds by the Labor government and at press conferences.

Deeming replied: “They smell blood in the water because no one’s coming up with a strong response. If we just bit back ...”

She continued through the 30-minute meeting saying she did not have homophobic or transphobic views and there was no evidence she held such views.

“There’s no smoking gun ... there’s literally no smoking gun,” she said. “Would you at least consider going on a full-fronted attack?”

Pesutto told her he wanted to focus on the daily issues that mattered to Victorians to put the opposition in a winning position in 2026. The leadership team could be heard saying Daniel Andrews was a liar, but that he won seats.

Deeming pointed out she had sought advice about her maiden speech but didn’t hear back from the opposition leader.

Earlier in the trial, the court was played a 70-minute secret recording that deputy Liberal leader David Southwick made at a March 19, 2023, meeting between Deeming and party leaders the day after the Let Women Speak rally.

Later on Thursday, Crozier – under cross-examination by Deeming’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC – told the court the leadership had been trying to support the new MP.

Chrysanthou claimed Crozier had unfairly “scolded” Deeming after she had missed a party room meeting on the day of her maiden speech to parliament.

Crozier said she had earlier told Deeming it was OK to arrive late to the meeting when she said she had an appointment she couldn’t shift.

She told the court that she had assumed this was for a medical appointment for one of Deeming’s children, but later discovered it was a booking with her hairdresser.

“Having a hair appointment should not be a priority over attending a party meeting,” Crozier told the court.

She denied that she had “scolded Deeming like a child” or that her response was ridiculous, as asserted by Chrysanthou.

“What was ridiculous was having a hair appointment,” Crozier said.

She said she was repeatedly forced to defend Deeming in the upper house from attacks from the government and the Greens.

Crozier told the court that Deeming should have volunteered an apology from the start, shown she had understood the seriousness of what unfolded and asked what she needed to do to resolve the issue for the party.

“I would have done anything to say, ‘I’m so sorry, what can I do, how do I do this, what is it that I need to do?’,” Crozier said. “There was none of that, there was none of it.”

Chrysanthou claimed Deeming was “harassed and bullied” throughout the meeting.

Deeming has denounced Nazism, rejects that the masked men in black at the rally who repeatedly performed a salute were there to support her cause and also rejects that the rally was anti-trans.

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