When you’re in a hole the best advice is to stop digging. But not if you’re a former Liberal leader in Victoria. Instead, you bring in an excavator, as well as a couple of sticks of gelignite, for good measure. How else do you explain the madness that’s being suggested by John Pesutto, Jeff Kennett, Ted Baillieu and others that the Liberal Party pay the $2.3m in indemnity costs ordered by the Federal Court after Pesutto defamed fellow Liberal Moira Deeming?
In what other workplace would people in a position of authority get bailed out after a court found they had reputationally destroyed a colleague, concealed secret recordings from evidence and generally made someone’s life a living hell? Can you imagine BHP shelling out millions to cover the costs of a CEO who lost a high-profile court case over the way he personally behaved; intimidating, bullying, shaming and expelling a female subordinate?
No. And yet the Liberal Party wonders why it has a problem with women if this is how one of their own is treated. But to merely equate this with rank misogyny misses the rich vein of snobbery that runs through this whole sorry saga. I mean how dare a former schoolteacher from struggle street in western Melbourne stand up to the lawyer-turned-party-leader from the leafy suburbs of Hawthorn? And in taking him on, how dare she win?
All through this case, the word around Melbourne Liberal circles was that this would be a laydown misere win for Pesutto. Anyone seen to be defending Deeming was to be ostracised and in not-so veiled threats from Kennett, he declared her supporters inside the parliamentary Liberal Party “disloyal and perhaps even treacherous” and threatened to have them “dealt with in due course when preselections are called for the next election”.
Aside from risking contempt of court, this bellowing from Kennett misread the mood of the party rank and file who not only supported Deeming but also shared many of her views about defending the rights of women and girls to single-sex spaces.
What is staggering is that Pesutto, a former solicitor and shadow attorney-general, refused to countenance losing this case and rejected a pre-trial offer to settle for $99,000 without even an apology. Indeed, part of the reason for the massive costs order against him is because he ignored opportunities to mitigate damage and deliberately prolonged proceedings, as repeatedly referenced by Justice O’Callaghan in his judgment. Indeed, noting: “Mr Pesutto was cross-examined for four-days. The length of it was due in considerable part to his inability or refusal to give a simple answer to simple enough questions … (giving) lengthy and non-responsive answers.”
It would seem the legal nous of these Liberal men is about on a par with their ability to defeat the Labor Party.
And therein lies the biggest issue.
Victoria is desperate for a change of government. Donors and party faithful have raised money to fund next year’s election campaign, yet if Pesutto’s acolytes on the party’s governing administrative committee do as they’re being told, that money will be used to bankroll his failed and defamatory vendetta. For a party that champions personal accountability, this would set a dangerous precedent; that courtroom losers can expect the party to pay for their actions even where there is no element of public duty. Does anyone think the Liberal Party would be pushed to bail out Deeming if positions were reversed?
If the Liberal Party wants further to alienate donors and supporters, already angry about the abysmal federal campaign, it would waste money meant for winning elections on saving Pesutto from the consequences of his own wilful folly. And if the Liberal Party wants further to taint its already questionable integrity, it would pay Pesutto’s legal expenses despite previously saying under presidents Greg Mirabella and incumbent Phil Davis that it would never do so.
In other words, bailing out Pesutto from an error of judgment so catastrophic that it really reflects on character would be just about the biggest own-goal possible from a party already reeling from its own mistakes. Yet that is precisely what the supposedly “moderate” Liberal Party establishment is now trying to do.
In addition to Kennett’s bid to have the party pay Pesutto’s bills, the vice-chair of Pesutto’s Hawthorn Liberal state electoral conference has also written to the administrative committee, seeking to have the party and its institutional funder, the Cormack Foundation, lend (not give) Pesutto the money needed to clear the costs order against him. This, says the Hawthorn SEC’s letter, is necessary to save Pesutto from bankruptcy, prevent a difficult by-election for his teal-threatened seat, and end the risk of other senior Liberals being sued for Pesutto’s otherwise unpaid costs.
The Hawthorn letter envisages that Pesutto would be able to repay the loan via “a structured program of fundraising … on behalf of the party … (enabling) the party to continue to take advantage of Mr Pesutto’s significant fundraising capacity and strong appeal among multicultural communities”.
On top of his electoral and parliamentary duties, the troubling aspect of this proposal is that Pesutto would be raising money to pay his own debts, in the guise of raising money for the party. It’s hard to imagine donors who aren’t, apparently, already prepared to bail him out being persuaded by this ruse. And if this fundraising bid ultimately failed, would the party be prepared to proceed against Pesutto to recover the debt, given its desperation to avoid proceedings against him now? In practice, what’s being presented as a loan almost certainly at some time in the future would turn into the gift that the party originally pledged would never be made.
It’s understandable that good Liberals are concerned by the spectacle of a former party leader being bankrupted and forced to leave the parliament on the basis of actions he took, however misguided. And worried about the prospect of other senior party leaders being pursued in court. Plus the prospect of further legal discovery exposing the depth of divisions and animosity inside a party that should be mobilising to defeat what’s possibly the worst Labor government in the state’s history.
But as a lawyer himself, Pesutto must have known the risks he was running. Even after the court’s damning decision, he found it hard to be magnanimous and admit his monumental mistake, which speaks volumes about his character and judgment.
If Pesutto stupidly racked up legal costs he now can’t readily cover, then he should go to the bank like the rest of us and get a loan over his Hawthorn home. If he won’t do that, then he should put it on his rich mates to give, or lend, him the funds to clear his debts and keep his seat. But it would be unconscionable for the Victorian Liberal Party to bail him out in any way.
If Pesutto’s private barrackers really have abandoned him, and he is bankrupted, the party will just have to gird its loins for the ensuing by-election. In some respects, the party may actually be better off with an unhappy former leader out of the parliament and with its own reputation intact as an institution that respects the rule of law, the rights of women, and the funds its members provide. After all, no political party worthy of the name should ever be scared of an election, especially given the state of government in Victoria.
If, on other hand, the administrative committee, where Pesutto loyalists apparently have the numbers (and should recuse themselves due to this conflict), is determined to exonerate him – and, by implication, to back him against Deeming, despite the Federal Court’s excoriating ruling – it should conduct a ballot of all rank-and-file party members first.
Go on. I dare them to do it.
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