Deeming backflip surely the last straw for weak Pesutto

Victorian Liberal Party leader John Pesutto. Picture: Wayne Taylor

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Westminster concept of responsible government died in Victoria. The grave was well dug and prepared by former premier Daniel Andrews. Now Jacinta Allan continues his digging.

Responsible government is simply that those who make the decisions take responsibility for the decisions – especially when they go wrong. The rule doesn’t only apply to the government. One might have hoped the Victorian opposition also had a solid grasp of the concept. But last week, 14 Liberal Party members of parliament willingly displayed that they have zero comprehension of our political system’s very basic expectations.

Among them are the “leadership team” and their apparent hangers-on – lured, it may be said – by the promise of a higher rung on the lowly Victorian Liberal ladder.

Another 14 Liberal members of parliament showed they understand responsibility. The partyroom vote to continue to exclude Western Metropolitan Region MP Moira Deeming from the parliamentary Liberal Party was a disgrace. It is an embarrassment to the entire Victorian Liberal Party. The body politic is all the worse for it.

Yet if it is possible to make matters worse, John Pesutto has done just that. Scared for his own leadership, he now wants Deeming back in the party room. His calling for another meeting to enable that vote smacks of putrid desperation. He must be bereft of principles.

Anything that now comes out of his mouth is stained by his empty words and foolish actions. How can Victorians take anything he now says seriously? Including “sorry”. He is no leader.

Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan hold a press conference in Melbourne. Picture: David Crosling

But the others who similarly voted to continue Deeming’s exile from the partyroom are equally smeared with Pesutto’s saccharine virtuosity, his vacuous word salads. His hypocrisy.

Having backed their leader’s desire to keep Deeming in exile, they too want to flip the coin and now want his leadership head.

It’s a good call, but it should’ve been made several weeks ago, if not months. It’s hard to follow the logic of the no voters: the man they should’ve tossed gets to stay; the woman who shouldn’t have been tossed remains outside the party. And now, to add to the confusion, they want Pesutto gone too.

None of the 14 no voters could possibly think they’re leadership material. They too are tainted by their bizarre actions. They appear as little emperors with no clothes.

Deeming’s recent courtroom victory over her leader was clear cut. On every measure, on all counts, Judge David O’Callaghan found that Pesutto had defamed her. Among other things, Pesutto claimed Deeming associated with neo-Nazis and their sympathisers in March 2023 after she spoke at a rally outside the Victorian parliament calling for women’s rights to safe spaces.

This is the same woman who told her then partyroom she had been raped on multiple occasions and partly brought up by a Holocaust survivor. Especially given that background, her fight for safe spaces for women is both unsurprising and powerful.

That someone would call her a Nazi sympathiser is unfathomable. And yet, in a petulant, stupid and politically insipid moment, someone did call her that.

Having been labelled so erroneously, kicked out of the partyroom, and unable to talk sense to her leader, Deeming then did what all proud and innocent people would do: defend her name and that of her family.

Deeming was right to fight back. She was right to want to return to her partyroom – to represent her electorate as the Liberal MP it voted for.

It is interesting that a motion to return her to the partyroom is even needed given the requirements of the first expulsion vote last year were never met. In that matter, Liberal MPs expelled Deeming for nine months with the proviso that a joint media release be issued with her. The media release never happened.

With the partyroom deal unfulfilled, surely that invalidated the vote to expel her, making any further motions perfunctory and redundant?

Deeming should automatically sit in the partyroom, without any further motions, and without Pesutto as leader. She has every right to place this caveat on her return given Pesutto’s penchant for vindictive behaviour.

The Liberal leader’s call for a new meeting to now overturn Friday’s vote is gobsmacking. Nothing in O’Callaghan’s findings have changed since he handed them down.

The 14 no voters – and their backroom advisers – are similarly challenged should they change their vote. How can they flip to the other side of the coin on a matter of principle and straightforward legal findings?

If he were a gentleman and perceptive to the concepts of conflict of interest and responsible government, Pesutto would have kept out of Friday’s vote altogether. Yet he did the opposite: he doubled down with not one, but two votes to make sure of Deeming’s abolition.

This is now the same man who wants her back in.

Much has been said of the vote cast in 1971 by then prime minister John Gorton to vote himself out of the office. His chairman’s vote reflected not only a gentlemanly and decent tone, but a wide-eyed view that understood half the room wanted him there and the other half didn’t.

Liberal MP Moira Deeming holds a press conference in the gardens of Parliament House after her defamation win against John Pesutto. Picture: Ian Currie

The Liberal partyroom on Spring Street is a long way from Canberra. One hopes the 14 MPs who voted against Deeming’s return to the Liberal parliamentary team are not celebrating their victory.

In their self-indulgence, they have damaged the Liberal brand in Victoria. They have presented the Victorian Liberals as blind to justice, blind to the law and blind to basic politics and some women. They have kicked the defamation can down the road. They might also have kicked the damages payout with it. Deeming was a first-time MP. She needed support, not a guillotine.

The 14 who voted against Deeming will now have to face two sets of voters – their Liberal Party preselectors and, if they’re lucky, the voters in their electorates.

All this at a time when Victorians desperately need leadership and an opposition that can work hard and offer an alternative government.

But right now, the bulk of MPs on either side cannot come to grips with that one tricky word: responsibility. A corrupt government is one thing. A useless, broken, rudderless opposition is another.

There are good people in the Liberal Party. But under the blanket of an obstinate leader, they cannot be heard.

Marita Punshon is a Melbourne-based writer, former journalist and member of the Victorian Liberal Party.