End this John Pesutto crisis or else, Jeff Kennett warns Victorian Liberal Party

Anti-Pesutto Liberals are reluctantly open to saving their ex-leader so that the party can focus on Labor, amid a dire warning from Jeff Kennett.

Moira Deeming and former Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto pose for a selfie in 2023. Picture: Facebook

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Jeff Kennett has warned Victorian Liberal chiefs the $2.3m crisis engulfing John Pesutto is damaging the party’s brand and urged them to find a quick resolution that avoids the former leader being made bankrupt.

With the 21-day countdown for Mr Pesutto to settle his court-ordered debt to Liberal MP Moira Deeming ticking, the former Victorian premier said the standoff had escalated beyond both rivals and was now threatening the ­future of the party.

“I know there are a lot of people involved trying to resolve this issue; it is not in the interests of the party that this continues,” he told The Australian.

“This is no longer a matter of the personalities involved, it is about the brand of the Liberal Party, and I know there are people working very hard to solve it and I hope they are successful.”

The Australian understands there is growing acceptance among Liberal MPs – even those who have been fiercely critical of Mr Pesutto’s original criticism of Ms Deeming and his failed legal tactics that led to his emphatic defeat in the defamation case – that the crisis needed to be fixed.

Former Victorian Liberal premiers Denis Napthine, Ted Baillieu and Jeff Kennett. Picture: David Caird

One anti-Pesutto figure said some MPs opposed to the party saving Mr Pesutto through a loan or another funding mechanism were grudgingly arriving at a view that it was now in the party’s interests to settle the crisis.

“There is no option off the table; there are people running around all over the place trying to find a way to secure (the money),” the anti-Pesutto figure said.

“The view is pay Hilton (NSW businessman Hilton Grugeon, who bankrolled Mrs Deeming’s legal action) the money he is owed and get that problem put to bed and then move on.

“While there is heartache and disharmony … it does just need to be fixed … people want it resolved … people want us to beat Jacinta Allan and Labor next year.”

Mrs Deeming sued Mr Pesutto in the Federal Court over allegations that he falsely portrayed her as a Nazi sympathiser after she helped organise and attended a Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. The court found in her favour and Mr Pesutto has already paid her more than $300,000 in damages. The court then ordered him to cover $2.3m of her costs.

The Victorian Liberal Party’s administrative committee is the organisation that would have to endorse the party lending Mr Pesutto about $1.5m. It’s understood the $800,000 has already been collected via a GoFundMe appeal and other methods.

The Australian revealed last week that Mrs Deeming was threatening to sue Liberal figures who financially supported Mr Pesutto’s legal action, including ex-premiers Ted Baillieu, Denis Napthine and Mr Kennett.

Mr Grugeon told The Australian last week the Liberal figures “supported somebody who was harassing, bullying … psychologically abusing a woman … all she did was (go) to a rally to speak in favour of what she believed”.

“One of them, I’ve told to his face that I will be paying whatever it takes for you to be brought to book for having contributed money to Pesutto when he was behaving like that.”

Mrs Deeming’s lawyers filed a bankruptcy notice with the Federal Court on Monday and if Mr Pesutto is bankrupted at the conclusion of the 21-day deadline he will be forced from parliament.