Depth of party disunity is saving John Pesutto’s leadership ... for now

With his two most senior staff departing his office, and the impending defamation trial brought on by Moira Deeming, John Pesutto is not in a good place.

Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto on Monday. Picture: Ian Currie

The key factor keeping John Pesutto’s leadership of the Victorian Liberal Party safe is the reality that the state party is such a disunited rabble it’s incapable of agreeing on a challenger.

Whichever way one looks at it, Pesutto is not in a good place.

On Sunday, he announced his two most senior staff – chief of staff Rodrigo Pintos Lopez and communications director Nick Johnston – were resigning, just a year after they were appointed, and almost three years out from the November 2026 election.

Both senior staff members maintain they left entirely of their own volition, a version of events backed by Mr Pesutto.

But the departures come after a long period of unhappiness with the leader’s office among both Liberals and Nationals, and whatever the motivation for them, they have left Mr Pesutto in an awkward position.

The Liberal leader has replaced Pintos Lopez with Louise Staley, who since losing her ultra-marginal seat of Ripon in 2022 has been knocked back for the job of party state director and failed to garner more than a handful of votes in her preselection bid for an upper house vacancy.

Expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming. Photograph by Arsineh Houspian.

Johnston has been replaced by his junior, Alex Woff who, at barely 30, has little work experience outside the Liberal Party.

All this comes as the Opposition Leader prepares to face expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming’s defamation case against him in September.

The legal stoush – which will see a battle between star barristers Sue Chrysanthou SC, for Ms Deeming, and Matt Collins KC, for Mr Pesutto – is exactly the kind of public spectacle most leaders would wish to avoid.

And it will be a costly one. Much has been made of contributions to Mr Pesutto’s legal fund by former premiers Jeff Kennett, Denis Napthine and Ted Baillieu, but none have been prepared to divulge the size of the donations, and rumours persist that they may not be sufficient to even fund a day in court.

It all amounts to circumstances ripe for a leadership challenge but, at present, the party room appears incapable of agreeing on an alternative leader, with Brad Battin, Sam Groth and Brad Rowswell frequently touted as contenders.

However, all three either appear to have little chance of gaining the necessary numbers, or are uninterested in challenging almost three years out from the next election.

There are opportunities that keep presenting themselves if only the opposition can put itself in a position to capitalise, in the form of a complacent third-term Labor government presiding over a state economy that is headed off a cliff, a prohibitively expensive infrastructure agenda full of cost blowouts, and an energy policy trajectory that is highly likely to see prices soar and/or reliability suffer for years before its lofty emissions targets are reached.