Secret recordings and Proud Boys: Trial has been four days of embarrassment for Liberals

If the Brits had Wagatha Christie and the Yanks had the Depp-Heard defamation case, then Spring Street’s answer to a (minor) celebrity trial has kicked off in the Federal Court, where ousted Liberal MP Moira Deeming is suing party leader John Pesutto.

The handbags may be less expensive, and the players less high profile – as evidenced by barristers repeatedly mispronouncing the names of MPs – but the trial is threatening to have long-lasting consequences for the Victorian Liberal Party.

Moira Deeming (right) and her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, arrive at court on Wednesday.Credit: Jason South

Over the course of three weeks, Justice David O’Callaghan is being asked to decide whether Pesutto defamed Deeming as a Nazi sympathiser or white supremacist. Or, as Deeming’s lawyer Sue Chrysanthou, SC, so succinctly put it, was she “tarred with the Nazi brush”.

On the other side, the methodical cross-examination of barrister Dr Matthew Collins, KC, suggested that Deeming could have perhaps prevented some of the harm to her reputation by being ever so slightly more curious about the company she keeps.

To make her case, Chrysanthou – who has represented a string of actual celebs like Geoffrey Rush and Lisa Wilkinson – has presented Deeming as a mum from the suburbs who was so respected by her colleagues that she was given the apparently “prestigious” position of Liberal Party whip in the Legislative Council.

Perhaps not the best example of loftiness in a chamber of just 12 Liberals.

With the greatest respect to O’Callaghan, his verdict in this defamation case is likely to be inconsequential to the broader political ramifications of a trial that is threatening to churn up and spit out federal and state MPs over the next few weeks.

After just four days in court, the public has already been treated to some embarrassing snippets of Liberal life on Spring Street, such as James Newbury’s anti-duck-hunting stance, which – according to Deeming – is threatening to “break up the Coalition”.

Even more problematic was the emergence of Spring Street’s answer to a lost Beatles tape – a 70-minute secret recording unearthed from Liberal deputy leader David Southwick’s iPhone apparently made without his colleagues’ consent. Not illegal, but certainly not something that builds trust.

Deeming’s counsel told the court the recording of the March 2023 meeting – a day after the MP attended the Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis – would show Pesutto had given a false statement and that Deeming was “ambushed” by the leadership team.

And on the latter point, at least, it’s hard to disagree.

Listeners were treated to the leadership team of Pesutto, Southwick, Georgie Crozier, and former MP Matt Bach – attempting to prove Deeming’s “associates” were not just pro-women, but neo-Nazi adjacent.

In mounting their case, Deeming was presented material hastily compiled by Pesutto’s then-chief of staff Rodrigo Pintos-Lopez. But it’s clear from the recording that the leadership team was also cranky about Deeming pushing her views on “sex-based rights”.

It’s too early to say whether the recording will help either side win the legal battle, but politically the secret recording – far from the first tape to dog the Victorian Liberals – has fuelled mistrust and anger at the leadership team from MPs who have long held the view that Deeming was denied natural justice.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto with wife Betty arriving at court on Wednesday.Credit: Jason South

But Pesutto’s fortunes started to swing in the middle of the week when his barrister, Collins, walked Deeming through evidence that showed some members of the public had warned her about the harm that would result from rubbing shoulders with “brownshirts”, long before she was hauled to the opposition leader’s office for a “please explain”.

He also produced social media posts and press releases from then-premier Daniel Andrews, federal Greens leader Adam Bandt and federal Labor MP Josh Burns linking the rally to neo-Nazis groups, before Pesutto said boo on the issue.

Under cross-examination, Deeming was asked if she was aware that a member of far-right group the Proud Boys had previously attended and spoken at other Let Women Speak rallies in the US alongside UK anti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull.

Deeming told the court she was unaware that had occurred, before Dr Collins showed her a tweet that she had responded to ahead of the rally which highlighted the Proud Boys link at other rallies.

There was also a puzzling moment when Deeming said she had wanted to be 100 per cent sure of the presence of or connection to any Nazis before making that accusation about anyone, while later admitting she hadn’t got around to viewing much of the evidence circulated by the Liberal Party to justify her expulsion.

Such a chronic lack of curiosity hasn’t excluded politicians from parliament in the past, but combined with her failure to understand the power of the company she keeps as a politician, it is perhaps just another cautionary tale about the risks of pursuing civil litigation.

On Friday, more Liberals – Renee Heath, Richard Riordan and David Hodgett – will be roped into this embarrassing saga, and we are only one-quarter of the way through the case.

Annika Smethurst is state political editor.

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