By Rachel Eddie
Ousted Liberal Moira Deeming said she did not want to assume people dressed in black and doing a salute on the steps of the Victorian parliament were neo-Nazis.
Deeming told the Federal Court on Thursday, while being taken through the events of March 18, 2023, that she wanted to be sure before accusing the group of something so bad.
Moira Deeming (right) arrives at the Federal Court with her barrister Sue Chrysanthou (left) on Thursday.Credit: AAPIMAGE
Deeming helped organise the Let Women Speak rally, hosted by UK activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, and told the court she had seen the men do the Nazi salute when they were being escorted away by police.
She said they were a separate group and rejected evidence from Pesutto’s team that the neo-Nazis were there to support the cause of the Let Women Speak rally.
Deputy Liberal leader David Southwick phoned her that afternoon and told her she needed to urgently denounce the neo-Nazis.
“I did not know if they were,” Deeming said on the third day of cross-examination in the high-stakes defamation trial she has launched against Opposition Leader John Pesutto.
Opposition Leader John Pesutto and wife Betty arrive at the Federal Court on Thursday.Credit: AAPIMAGE
“It’s very hard, very difficult to concede there were actual, real Nazis in Melbourne in 2023. It was so shocking, I couldn’t believe it, I thought these are just a bunch of horrendous … surely it’s not true that we have legitimate people who actually believe and seriously believe in Nazis.”
Deeming said she “needed to be very, very careful before I made that accusation” – that the men were neo-Nazis – because it was the most serious thing she could accuse someone of.
Matthew Collins, KC, for Pesutto, replied that it was a matter that needed to be investigated if she wasn’t sure. Instead, he said, she participated in a YouTube video with Keen-Minshull, Melbourne woman Angela Jones, and former NSW Liberal candidate Katherine Deves where they drank champagne.
In the video, recorded hours after the rally and played to the court, Keen-Minshull suggested the neo-Nazis were actually police or trans-rights activists dressed up as Nazis. Jones also appeared to question whether the men were Nazis, the court heard.
Liberal MP Renee Heath and opposition frontbenchers Richard Riordan and David Hodgett will give evidence for Deeming on Friday.
Deeming conceded that by about March 20, 2023 – when Pesutto and the leadership team had progressed steps to expel her from the parliamentary Liberal Party – she had not personally investigated all the claims about Keen-Minshull associating with parts of the far-right, despite those being used as justification to expel her in a dossier and motion to the party room.
Deeming told the court she had forwarded the dossier to Keen-Minshull to seek her response and had also engaged defamation lawyers, but had not clicked through the dossier herself to test all of its claims.
She said others, such as her husband Andrew Deeming, were helping her to do this on her behalf.
“I was outraged that I was being blamed for it, I didn’t think it was true,” Deeming told the court.
Collins took Deeming through the dossier and she agreed that it was, for the most part, factually accurate.
Deeming alleges Pesutto defamed her as a Nazi sympathiser, which Pesutto rejects.
Deeming rejects that the Let Women Speak rally was anti-trans and that the neo-Nazis were there to support it.
Collins on Wednesday told the court she was reckless not to have looked into Keen-Minshull’s record before the rally, particularly as a member of parliament and of the parliamentary Liberal Party.
Pesutto moved to expel Deeming from the parliamentary Liberal Party in the days after the rally. Deeming was instead suspended for nine months in a last-minute compromise, before she was ultimately expelled in May after threatening to bring in lawyers.
The hearing continues.
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