Lawyers for ousted Liberal MP Moira Deeming are pushing for her to take the stand in her defamation action against the Victorian opposition leader, John Pesutto, to outline her “hurt feelings”, while a former MP may be forced to travel from the UK to testify.
Nearly 30 witnesses, including current and former Liberal MPs, are expected to give evidence in the trial, with federal court justice David O’Callaghan not convinced one of them – Matt Bach – should be able to testify via video link from the UK.
Deeming’s lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou SC, said the MP should take the stand during the trial to provide her “hurt feelings evidence”, which is taken into consideration when damages are awarded in defamation cases.
“It is the practice of some of the judges who have been hearing these matters to at least hear the applicant’s hurt feelings evidence viva voce,” Chrysanthou told the court.
“Often, judges require at least that aspect of the applicants evidence to be oral just because of the nature of that evidence.“
The trial – set to begin on 16 September – will run for three weeks, with Deeming to call 21 witnesses and Pesutto eight.
Pesutto’s lawyer, Matthew Collins KC, said the witnesses were “overwhelmingly professional people, many of them politicians”. If all gave evidence verbally, he said it could lengthen the trial.
He cited Bruce Lehrmann’s failed defamation trial against Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson, which ran for five weeks. Collins represented Network 10 in the matter and Chrysanthou represented Wilkinson.
“In that case Justice Lee required more than just hurt feelings but actually the entirety of the evidence of the applicant and the entirety of the evidence of Ms [Brittany] Higgins to be given viva voce,” he said.
O’Callaghan replied: “I imagine that was because there was such forensic controversy, this case is not like that.”
The judge pushed back at Collins’ request for Bach to appear via video link and said it was important to be able assess the credibility of key witnesses in person.
“It’s highly undesirable to have witnesses appear by video because it makes our job as judges harder,” he said. “That combined with the unreliability of the technology – as much as we like to imagine it is flawless, it simply isn’t.”
Bach was a member of the Liberal leadership team that met with Deeming after she participated in the Let Women Speak rally in March 2023, which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
Deeming is suing Pesutto over a series of media releases, press conferences and radio interviews he gave after the rally during his push to expel her from the parliamentary party, in which she claims he characterised her as a neo-Nazi sympathiser or supporter.
The opposition leader earlier settled defamation cases with two other women – Melbourne woman Angie Jones and British activist Kellie-Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker – over the comments.
He will argue he always unequivocally said Deeming was not a Nazi, and that she damaged her own reputation by continuing to claim that he had.
The matter will return to the court for a case management hearing on 3 September.
