Don’t ask us to cover Moira Deeming legal bill, Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto told

Senior Victorian Liberals have told leader John Pesutto not to ‘even ask’ the party to foot the bill for his defamation battle against expelled MP Moira Deeming, ‘because the answer will be no’.

Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

Senior Victorian Liberals have told leader John Pesutto not to “even ask” the party to foot the bill for his defamation battle against expelled MP Moira Deeming, “because the answer will be no”.

Questions over how the Opposition Leader will defend a case that insiders say could involve costs and damages of more than $1m come as party members converge on the regional city of Bendigo for what is expected to be a tense and chaotic weekend State Council meeting.

The meeting comes just a week after the partyroom voted 19-11 to expel Ms Deeming from the parliamentary Liberal Party following the escalation of a dispute between her and Mr Pesutto ­dating back to his unsuccessful ­attempt to expel her in March after she attended a Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

It also follows talk of a federal intervention into the Victorian division of the party and horror election results over the past 12 months, with the Liberals reduced to just 19 of 88 lower house seats in state parliament and 10 of 39 Victorian federal seats, most recently losing the Melbourne seat of Aston in an April by-election.

Ms Deeming, who remains a member of the organisational Liberal Party, received a standing ovation from dozens of grassroots members when she vowed to continue to advocate for “Liberal values” at a party forum on the Mornington Peninsula on Thursday, alongside local state MP Chris Crewther, and Howard and Abbott minister Eric Abetz.

In her defamation action against Mr Pesutto – set to be filed in the Federal Court on June 8 – Ms Deeming alleges Mr Pesutto accused her “of being a Nazi sympathiser” in seeking to justify his botched attempt to expel her from the party in March.

Ms Deeming has hired leading defamation lawyer Patrick George, who has previously represented Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd, and is the author of the textbook Defamation Law in ­Australia.

In turn, Mr Pesutto has engaged veteran media lawyer and Minter Ellison partner Peter Bartlett, as well as KC Matt Collins, who has previously acted for columnist Andrew Bolt and actor Rebel Wilson.

A spokesman for Mr Pesutto on Friday told The Weekend Australian that discussions “are ongoing” with the Liberal Party’s administrative committee about whether the party will foot the bill for his legal costs.

The committee is set to meet next Thursday, when Mr Pesutto could ask members to vote on whether or not to bankroll his legal battle.

“The current thinking is that the answer would be ‘no’ – he would not get a vote up at admin, but he may go on a charm offensive to try to get the numbers,” said one senior Liberal.

Victorian MP Moira Deeming. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

“There’s a view that the wider party always supports the leader, but there’s a point where that ­becomes destructive. We’re talking about committing the party to $1.5m-plus. It’s also incumbent upon us to protect the division’s money.”

Mr Pesutto is expected to ­receive a frosty reception from scores of party members when he addresses State Council on Saturday morning.

The issue of Ms Deeming’s ­expulsion does not feature in the agenda for the conference, after a the Liberal Party’s agenda committee rejected motions from the Niddrie and Benambra branches of the party.

The ­motions condemned Mr Pesutto’s initial attempt to expel Ms Deeming and were rejected on the basis that they were “opinions” rather than policy ­issues.