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John Pesutto has been ordered to pay Moira Deeming $300,000 in damages after defaming her on five occasions by falsely casting her as a Nazi sympathiser.

Calling people Nazis is no longer a winning a political strategy.

If Donald Trump’s return to the White House didn’t underscore this truth, then look Down Under, where embattled Victorian MP Moira Deeming has just won a “blockbuster” Federal Court case against her former party leader, John Pesutto.

Pesutto has been ordered to pay Deeming A$300,000 in damages, in addition to footing all legal costs, after Judge David O’Callaghan found that the Victorian opposition leader had defamed Ms Deeming on five occasions by falsely casting her as a Nazi sympathiser.

MEDIA STATEMENT FROM MOIRA DEEMING MP

I am grateful to God for this outcome, to the Court for its careful and prompt consideration of my case and to my lawyers whose dedication, expertise and integrity is unmatched.

The Judge found that I was defamed in five separate…

— Moira Deeming MP (@MoiraDeemingMP) December 12, 2024

A wife, mother of four, and former high school teacher, Deeming’s only crime was to attend the ironically named “Let Women Speak” rally in Melbourne in March 2023 and voice her support for female-only sports and bathrooms.

The event had been organised by British women’s rights activist and firebrand Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, and was infamously gatecrashed by a small band of neo-Nazis who performed a grotesque salute on the steps of Parliament House.

In a naked act of political posturing, Pesutto pounced on this unfortunate occurrence and moved to expel Deeming from the party room on the pretext that “knowingly associating” with neo-Nazis threatened the Liberal Party brand.

But it was actually Pesutto who damaged the party’s brand, with Thursday’s case revealing that the Liberal leader had thrown Deeming under the proverbial bus to appease the media, the trans lobby — and most of all, then Premier and rival Daniel Andrews. As reported by The Australian:

Judge O’Callaghan said Mr Pesutto’s “perceived urgency” to publish what ended up being defamatory comments about Ms Deeming was driven more by a fear of the political damage that would be inflicted upon his “fledgling” leadership by Victoria’s then-premier Daniel Andrews, than by his professed concern that the Liberal Party and parliament would be brought into disrepute.

“By way of example only, at the 19 March meeting, Mr Pesutto referred to his ‘concern about where [Premier] Andrews is going to take it this week’ because he has ‘been itching for something to clobber me with and this is it, it’s coming,’” Judge O’Callaghan wrote.

Pesutto was eventually successful in ousting Ms Deeming from the Victorian Liberal Party, forcing her to serve in the months since as an independent MP.

Following this week’s legal victory, however, Deeming indicated she would rejoin the party room if invited, saying she has “every right to be there”.

“If you look at the Liberal Party platform, they are good values and it’s run by volunteers and the volunteers deserve better than what happened… under their Liberal Party logo” she told reporters after the ruling was handed down.

“Not one Liberal Party value was honoured or furthered in Victoria by this relentless and remorseless campaign,” Ms Deeming also explained in a prepared statement. She continued:

I was never going to let it go unchallenged in this state and under my Liberal Party logo that innocent women rallying against the destruction of every single common sense safeguard designed to protect them and their children could be attacked and scapegoated as Nazis and bigots.

Those of us in this fight to restore parental rights, sex-based rights for women and safeguards for children, we are in every political party, we are in every workplace, every union, every family. We will never run out of energy, we will never be crushed and we are going to survive whatever it is that you want to throw at us, and then we will win.

Just hours after Pesutto lost in court, he faced cameras to declare that he plans to stay on as Victorian Liberal Leader.

The papers and the pundits don’t seem quite so certain.

In its write-up of the Deeming affair, The Australian quoted senior state Liberal MPs who described it as “an ugly day” for Pesutto and expressed major doubts over the viability of his leadership going forward.

If Pesutto is challenged, among the most likely alternate leaders are frontbenchers Brad Battin, James Newbury and Sam Groth.

That said, Moira Deeming wouldn’t do a bad job herself. 

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Republished with thanks to Mercator. Screenshot courtesy of Moira Deeming MP.