Moira Deeming to issue bankruptcy proceedings against John Pesutto to recover $2.3m legal debt

Liberal MP Moira Deeming will issue bankruptcy proceedings against John Pesutto this week, warning she won’t be bullied out of recovering the $2.3m he owes her in legal costs.

Liberal MP Moira Deeming will issue bankruptcy proceedings against John Pesutto this week, warning she won’t be bullied out of recovering the debt.

Mrs Deeming said she would issue a bankruptcy notice on Friday unless Mr Pesutto had paid the $2.3m he owes her in legal costs following the protracted defamation battle she won.

Mr Pesutto would then have 21 days to honour the multimillion-dollar debt, enter into a payment arrangement or face bankruptcy and an abrupt end to his political career.

If declared bankrupt Mr Pesutto would be ineligible to sit in the parliament, meaning a by-election in his marginal seat of Hawthorn would be triggered.

John Pesutto owes Moira Deeming $2.3m in legal costs. Picture: David Crosling

Moira Deeming says she will issue bankruptcy proceedings against Pesutto if he doesn’t pay up. Picture: David Geraghty

Few Liberals believe the party could hold onto the seat and fear a loss could fatally damage the party’s hopes ahead of next year’s state election.

But Mrs Deeming said she wouldn’t be swayed from recovering costs awarded to her by the Federal Court.

“People want to blame me and treat me like I’m being greedy for expecting him to pay the bill he forced me to rack up,” she said.

“This is the same behaviour that I’ve been subjected to this whole time, and I’m never, ever, ever submitting to that again.”

Mrs Deeming said she had felt persistent pressure to settle her matter out of court for the good of the party but said she pursued a public defamation trial amid repeated refusals by Mr Pesutto to publicly exonerate her and apologise for saying she had associations with Nazis after a group of the far-Right extremists gatecrashed a women’s rights rally she was speaking at in March 2023.

And she said Liberal Party powerbrokers at both a federal and state level had threatened her preselection unless she settled out of court.

“I’m not going to be held hostage ever again to nonsense like that,” she said.

“I will never be held hostage and blackmailed like that, ever again, I’ll absolutely fight that, like I look forward to it.”

Moira Deeming was accepted back into the Liberal Party after winning her case against John Pesutto. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Amid growing internal concerns about the party’s direction under new Opposition Leader Brad Battin, senior Liberals said losing the seat could threaten his leadership.

Internal disputes have broken out in recent weeks over his leadership, with at least one senior Liberal who backed him taking the role no longer supporting the new leadership.

Mrs Deeming said a loss in a potential Hawthorn by-election should have no impact on Battin, who recently promoted her as his key representative in the west.

“Ultimately, any brand damage and negative impact on the election chances of the Victorian Liberal Party from this saga were weighed, decided and set in motion on the 19th of March, 2023, by Pesutto, and his former leadership team David Southwick, Georgie Crozier and Matt Bach.

“Blaming any of the negative political consequences from that decision on myself or Brad is clearly done in bad faith as well as being patently absurd.”

New Opposition leader Brad Battin has been caught in the crossfire of the Deeming v Pesutto case. Picture: Valeriu Campan

A GoFundMe page setup in support of Mr Pesutto had raised about $165,000 of a $3m target, intensifying private lobbying of the party’s investment arm, the Cormack Foundation, to help fund the legal bill.

Mrs Deeming said any move by the foundation or the party to fund Mr Pesutto’s bill would be inappropriate.

Asked if she would consider leaving the party, Mrs Deeming said not a chance.

“This my party, I stood up for our principles publicly and privately, I was declared innocent, and not one iota of evidence was found to support the claim that any of my actions or any of my beliefs, including my fight to reinstate child safeguards and women’s rights, were found to be extreme,” she said.

“So, no, I’m not going anywhere. If others think our only path to winning government is to subvert our political principles as agents of change by campaigning for other party’s beliefs under the Liberal logo, well I think they should resign and join Labor, the Teals or the Greens.”

Originally published as Moira Deeming to issue bankruptcy proceedings against John Pesutto to recover $2.3m legal debt