Ousted Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming agreed her views on transgender and gender-diverse people were “controversial” within the party, as she began giving evidence in a high-stakes defamation battle.
Deeming is suing the state Liberal leader, John Pesutto, for allegedly falsely portraying her as a Nazi sympathiser after she spoke at the March 2023 “Let Women Speak” rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. She was expelled from the party less than two months later after initially being suspended.
During cross-examination in the federal court on Tuesday, Pesutto’s barrister, Matthew Collins KC, asked Deeming if she understood her views of transgender and gender-diverse people to be controversial in the Liberal party.
She replied: “yes.”
Deeming also told the court that when media reports in early 2023 characterised her views as extreme, she requested Pesutto correct this characterisation, which he did not.
The court also heard that Deeming paid for sound equipment and security guards for the rally and was in contact with the co-organiser of the event, UK gender-critical activist Kellie-Jay Keen, for two months before the event.
The courtroom was shown social media messages and emails between Deeming and Keen, where the MP offered advice and assistance about hosting the rally.
Earlier in the day, the court was played audio from a secretly recorded meeting that took place a day after Deeming spoke at the rally, during which she repeatedly told Pesutto and members of the party’s leadership team she was not a Nazi.
Deeming defends herself in the recording of the 19 March meeting – the day after the rally.
“Very obviously, I’m not a Nazi and I don’t support Nazis,” she said.
Deeming said she had only became aware that group of men, dressed in black, were Nazis when police escorted them from the steps of parliament.
“There’s no evidence against me,” she said in the recording. “They just turned up.”
In the recording, Deeming told the Liberal leadership team she was willing to condemn “everything”, including Nazism, and was “eager” to do so.
The state’s deputy Liberal leader, David Southwick, told Deeming in the recording that a tweet by Angela Jones, a co-organiser of the rally, was offensive to Jewish people.
The tweet read: “Nazis and women want to get rid of paedo filth, why don’t you?”
Deeming said in the recording she believed the tweet was condemning paedophilia.
Pesutto also told Deeming she could “not hang out with these people” and raised Katherine Deves, a former Liberal candidate who ran for the seat of Warringah in the 2022 election, attending the Let Women Speak rally.
“We could find Daniel Andrews robbing a 7-Eleven but if you bring Katherine Deves down, everyone’s going to go ‘don’t care about that’,” he said.
Deeming’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, said the MPs never put evidence to Deeming that Deves had Nazi-links and argued what Pesutto was really talking about was “sex-based rights”.
“What they’re doing throughout this meeting is changing the goal posts,” she said.
Deeming and Pesutto sat within metres of each other, behind their barristers, as the recording was played to the courtroom on Tuesday.
In it Pesutto told Deeming there was a “very concerning perception out there that we are associated with Nazis”.
“It’s going to be toxic to us,” he said. “
The existence of the audio, recorded by Southwick, was revealed in the courtroom on Monday.
At the end of the recording, Pesutto told Deeming he would move a motion to expel her from the parliamentary party and that she has the option to resign.
Deeming was among the speakers at the rally, which she also helped to organise, on the steps of Victoria’s parliament on 18 March 2023.
The event was co-organised by Keen, also known as Posie Parker, as part of her tour of Australia and New Zealand in which it was claimed that the push for transgender rights was silencing, and discriminating against, women.
On Monday the court heard that Pesutto had considered expelling Deeming from the party on the day of the rally, with text messages between him and Southwick and Louise Staley, a former Liberal MP, shown to the court.
Deeming alleges that Pesutto defamed her in media releases, press conferences and interviews he gave after the rally.
In his defence document, Pesutto argued that he “repeatedly and unequivocally acknowledged publicly that he does not believe Deeming to be a neo-Nazi, a white supremacist, or anything of similar substance or effect”.
He admitted to conveying some imputations, including that Deeming associated with speakers at the event who had “known links with neo-Nazis and white supremacists”.
In court documents, Pesutto said he would rely on the defences of honest opinion, contextual truth, public interest and qualified privilege.
The defamation trial is expected to run for three weeks.
