John Pesutto did not tar Moira Deeming with a Nazi brush, lawyer argues
John Pesutto’s lawyer has argued that independent Liberal MP Moira Deeming is an ‘unreliable historian’, as the judge overseeing the defamation trial questioned some of the Victorian Opposition leader’s evidence.
Independent Liberal MP Moira Deeming has been dubbed an “unreliable historian” who was tarred with a Nazi brush before John Pesutto made alleged defamatory publications about her, the Victorian Opposition leader’s lawyer has argued.
In the final day of closing arguments in the high-profile Federal Court defamation suit brought by Ms Deeming against the Victorian Liberal leader, Matthew Collins KC aimed to convince the judge that his client, Mr Pesutto, reasonably believed it was in the public interest to explain his reasons for moving a motion to expel the MP.
Ms Deeming, who was expelled in May last year, is suing her former boss over his efforts to oust her from the Liberal partyroom, and over allegations he falsely portrayed her as a Nazi sympathiser in the aftermath of a March 2023 Let Women Speak event in Melbourne that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
Mr Pesutto’s case relies on defences of honest opinion, contextual truth, public interest and qualified privilege.
Following a meeting between the Victorian Liberal Party leadership and Ms Deeming on March 19, Mr Pesutto issued a media release and a dossier, gave two interviews and held a press conference where he sought to justify the action he was taking against the ousted MP.
Ms Deeming alleges these publications defamed her.
Dr Collins argued that the “ordinary, reasonable” reader would not impute Nazism from the media release his client issued, and that this was reflected in the fact that journalists did not report that Mr Pesutto had accused Ms Deeming of being a Nazi.
“If anyone thought Mr Pesutto was saying Ms Deeming was a Nazi, they must have been engaging in an impermissible process of scouring the media release, looking for strained or hidden or forced or sinister meaning,” he told the court.
Dr Collins also rejected the argument that Mr Pesutto had tarred Ms Deeming with a Nazi brush.
“Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of people were saying these things about her in the days before Mr Pesutto said anything,” he said.
The barrister urged Justice David O’Callaghan to treat Ms Deeming’s evidence with caution.
“Ms Deeming wasn’t a dishonest witness. She was, in many respects, an unreliable historian,” he submitted. “She’s obviously aggrieved. We say the grievance is misplaced, but she’s genuinely honestly aggrieved. And she said, her husband said that her sense of grievance had affected her reliability of her memory.”
However, Justice O’Callaghan noted that he was not convinced by some of Mr Pesutto’s evidence. and questioned why Dr Collins kept referring to “sex-based rights” as “so-called sex-based rights”.
“His evidence about Ms Deeming having a bad reputation for giving succour to hatred and so on, struck me as unsatisfactory, because when asked how, he was unable to provide a single particular,” he said.
He also highlighted the secret tape of the March 19 meeting between Victorian Liberal Party leadership and Ms Deeming which was kept under wraps until a week before the trial despite Mr Pesutto knowing of its existence as early as December last year.
“The recording demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt, the recollection of every person at that meeting … was wrong,” Justice O’Callaghan said.
In her rebuttal, Sue Chrysanthou SC, representing Ms Deeming, said the Victorian Liberal leader deliberately used “loose language” such as Nazi “associations” in his publications to confuse and mislead.
She argued that she did not need to rely on republication of Mr Pesutto’s March 19 media release to prove serious harm, and pointed to the 300,000 views the media release got via three journalists and news sites posting it on social media.
“The grapevine effect … is not a specific republication. The grapevine effect is parts or all of defamatory allegations about someone, being spoken about, being passed on, being gossiped about,“ Ms Chrysanthou said.
“In one case, I described social media to be the modern day grapevine, where it spreads like a virus.”
A judgment is expected before the end of the year.
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