This is the victory Pesutto wanted but the result was far from decisive

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

From Peter Dutton down, there is an acceptance the Victorian Liberal Party has become a basket case.

The killing of former Liberal MP Moira Deeming’s career with the parliamentary party was conducted like an old-fashioned seal hunt.

State leader John Pesutto has done this with a clear view Deeming was neither wanted, nor needed, in his quest for victory in 2026.

“I’m not here to mess around,” Pesutto said on Friday.

The broad consensus is that Pesutto has self-harmed by pushing the Deeming issue almost from the moment she walked onto the steps of parliament to a gender protest that ultimately attracted neo-Nazis.

No one sensible is suggesting Deeming is an extreme right-winger but there is plenty of evidence to show she was naive and failed to read the room. Her decision to take defamation action made her position untenable.

But where does it leave the state Liberals?

Pesutto is planning significant reform of the parliamentary party and the organisation, with unity at the centre of the equation. His view is that Deeming never looked like being on a unity ticket with the broad partyroom, and her interests were so narrow and obsessive that it would have derailed the Liberals in inner-city seats.

No one should shy away from the fact that, post the Aston federal by-election, politics in Victoria has become acutely difficult for the Liberals.

Dutton is unpopular and, despite the Andrews government ageing rapidly and dropping the ball on fiscal policy, the Liberal brand is in the gutter.

Former Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

Pesutto – and possibly Dutton – cannot win with the party in such disarray.

Pesutto is proposing to spend his first year as Opposition Leader cleaning out the core problems in the party, including investigating what to do with the administrative committee, which runs the organisation between party conferences.

While his leadership has been weakened by the Deeming crisis, Pesutto has one strength.

If he can stabilise the parliamentary party, he is the most talented and obvious choice to lead it, regardless of the Deeming fiasco.

If he can unite most of the partyroom behind him, there is more than enough going against Labor on the money front to suggest the Coalition (remember the much more successful Nats?) can go close to winning the next election.

That won’t happen if the focus is on killing any more of his colleagues.

Unity requires an intent by every member of the parliamentary party to want to win, but also an acceptance that, in a broad church, not everyone thinks the same way.