Liberals in crisis as Deeming vows to sue Pesutto and faces fresh expulsion push

State Liberal MP Moira Deeming will sue party leader John Pesutto for defamation and launch legal action challenging her nine-month suspension from the parliamentary team, inflaming tensions within the party.

Deeming demanded on Thursday that Pesutto publicly declare she was not a Nazi sympathiser and allow her to return to the Liberal party room, saying he would otherwise face legal action. He refused and Deeming later confirmed she would sue.

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto speaking to the media after Moira Deeming’s suspension. Credit: Darrian Traynor

“Since March, I have tried through a mediation process, with the support of good colleagues like Kim Wells MP, to resolve the impasse and ensure the leadership delivered on the commitment that was made to me when I accepted the suspension,” Deeming said in an email to colleagues at 3.30pm on Thursday.

“I am sorry to say that these attempts have failed. The leadership have advised me that they will not work with me for a solution because I put a deadline on the issue after almost two months.”

Earlier that day Pesutto said Deeming was “free to do what she wants”.

“If Moira Deeming is going to take action to sue me, and effectively sue the parliamentary Liberal Party … I think that would be a matter for her to consider,” he said.

The opposition leader said that since a failed attempt in March to expel Deeming, he had said in several press conferences that she was not a Nazi sympathiser.

Some Liberal MPs are standing by the leader, and are now threatening a fresh push to expel Deeming permanently, while others back her demands and accuse Pesutto of treating her unfairly.

At least five MPs, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, told The Age that colleagues who had been reluctant to expel Deeming in March were now changing their positions.

“We are going to have to work out who moves and seconds the motion, because the queue is so long,” one MP said. “The anger and calls for her to be expelled are overwhelming.”

Highlighting the fractures within the party, senior Liberals also accused some colleagues of being “terrorists” trying to undermine the leadership, while others said Pesutto had presided over a bullying culture.

The saga began in March with a failed attempt by Pesutto to dump Deeming, the first-term Western Metropolitan Victorian MP, from his parliamentary team for attending the controversial Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

At the time, Pesutto’s office distributed a 15-page dossier that he and his supporters claimed showed some organisers of the rally, including British activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull and Melbourne woman Angela Jones, were “publicly associated with far-right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazi activists”.

However, Deeming avoided expulsion after she told colleagues her advocacy for sex-based women’s and children’s rights stemmed from a deeply personal experience. She gave an emotional speech that moved some of her colleagues to tears. The Age knows the details of the incident but has chosen not to report them.

Victorian MP Moira Deeming exits the party room in Melbourne on March 27.Credit: Darrian Traynor

The party room agreed to instead suspend her for nine months. Pesutto later told a press conference that Deeming made “important concessions”, but he did not publicly disclose what they were.

That heated meeting on March 27 is again at the centre of the showdown that has further deepened divisions within the party.

Liberal MPs have claimed they were considering lodging a formal bullying complaint against Pesutto over his treatment of upper house MP Renee Heath at a party room meeting on Tuesday, where MPs rejected endorsing the minutes taken by Heath of the March 27 meeting.

Heath, who backed Deeming, is the party room secretary responsible for taking the minutes of meetings. However, there are conflicting accounts of the meeting notes Heath took and whether they were appropriate and accurately reflected what transpired.

Pesutto said it was not correct to describe the exchange in question as bullying and that he was simply trying to address the conflicting minutes.

Ten MPs were of the view that Pesutto’s comments to Heath at the meeting did not amount to bullying, but Liberal MP Beverley McArthur said Heath “has had a tough time”.

In her Thursday email to colleagues, Deeming said: “In light of the fact that the terms of the suspension have never been honoured and that even the minutes of that meeting have failed to be endorsed, I don’t feel it is fair or just that I continue to sit outside the party room in limbo, nor do I believe that a legitimate suspension is actually in force, despite the fact that I sit on the crossbench as instructed.

“Indeed, I listened carefully to the leader’s comment today in his press conference that ‘there was nothing in the dossier that ever accused Moira Deeming of being a Nazi or having any neo-Nazi sympathies’.

“If that is the case, then why am I suspended? If that is the case, then why did John send an email associating me with Nazis and Nazism, and repeat those claims in the media multiple times?

“Given that the leadership did not make the statement of exoneration, or confirm my return, and that no mediation or even any minutes exist to settle this dispute, I have advised my lawyers to prepare a legal challenge over my suspension because I believe that we need to come together as colleagues and have a do-over meeting.”

A dozen Liberal MPs said they were frustrated that the infighting was once again overshadowing the opposition’s capacity to put the blowtorch on the Andrews government, which is preparing to hand down a horror budget in less than three weeks.

However, at least half said it was better for Pesutto to deal with the recalcitrant MPs now, instead of closer to the 2026 election.

In an extraordinary step, Brighton MP James Newbury and former opposition leader Matthew Guy called out the “terrorists” within their party, lambasting them for focusing their attention on bringing down Pesutto rather than holding Premier Daniel Andrews to account.

“They need to work out whether they’re Liberals or whether they want to sit on the crossbench,” Newbury said outside of parliament. “Everybody’s had enough.”

Guy added: “There’s a couple of terrorists within the parliamentary party who need to work out whether they want to sit with the parliamentary party or not. But the vast majority of us back John Pesutto and will continue to back John Pesutto because he’s a very good leader.”

Pesutto on Thursday warned his MPs to be team players.

“We have to do it for Victoria’s sake. If people don’t want to be part of that reform project, then I think it’s important that they consider their position. Do they want to remain in the parliament long term?,” he said.

One Liberal MP likened Deeming’s threat to “acts of bastardry”.

“If Deeming goes ahead and sues the party leader, any remnant of sympathy for her will evaporate,” one MP said.

“Instead of learning her lesson, she now seems to be taking on the role of a martyr and wanting to blow up the Liberal Party. If she sues the leader, then it’s all over for her. A lot of people who had a lot of sympathy for her saying ‘she’s new, she’s naive’, [are now] infuriated.”

Asked about the turmoil on Thursday morning and whether she had a response to some MPs using the word terrorist, Deeming said: “I don’t buy into this ridiculous language.”

With Rachel Eddie

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