A senior Victorian Liberal secretly recorded a pivotal meeting over the political future of Moira Deeming as “insurance”, as he felt betrayed by the MP’s actions after a rally she helped organised was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis, a court has heard.
Deeming, now an independent MP after her expulsion from the Liberal party room, is suing the opposition leader, John Pesutto, for allegedly falsely portraying her as a Nazi sympathiser after she spoke at the Let Women Speak rally held on 18 March 2023 that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Pesutto has rejected the allegation.
Appearing before the defamation trial, the deputy Liberal leader, David Southwick, said he recorded a meeting held the day after the rally, involving the first-time MP and the party’s senior leadership team, to “protect” himself.
“It was, for me, in many respects an insurance policy,” Southwick told the federal court on Wednesday.
Southwick told the court the arrival of the neo-Nazis on the front steps of parliament was “triggering” for him, being Jewish.
He said he called Deeming while she was still at the event and told her to write a statement distancing herself from the men.
Instead, Southwick said Deeming was filmed in a video in the hours after the event, in which she drank champagne with the rally’s organisers. Other women in the video questioned whether the men were actually neo-Nazis or police or trans-rights activists in costume, the court has heard.
“I had specific expectation of Ms Deeming from that call … I was shocked in terms of what actually happened,” Southwick told the court.
“I felt that from those events and following from the call, and later from the champagne video, and the trivialisation of what was the darkest day I have known in terms of hate on the steps of parliament, to behave that way and to trivialise what was so offensive to me, I felt that I couldn’t trust Ms Deeming.”
Southwick told the court Deeming had “lied to me” in the phone call.
“I felt like I had to protect myself from what was about to happen,” he said.
“I haven’t taped a private conversation with a colleague, but this was something that was very personal.”
Deeming was initially suspended from the Liberal party room in the days after the rally, before later being expelled.
She had attended the 19 March meeting, along with Southwick, Pesutto, and the Liberal’s upper house leaders Georgie Crozier and Matt Bach.
Southwick told the court it was not a premeditated decision to record the meeting and he did not tell his colleagues about it at the time. It was only when the trial began last month that the secret recording was revealed, though he told Pesutto in December.
Southwick said he was “horrified” by Deeming’s reluctance to immediately call the men neo-Nazis and dismissed Chrysanthou’s suggestion that the men at the rally – who wearing “short shorts, baseball caps” and were relatively young – “could have just been pack of fools”.
“I completely disagree with that,” he said. “If someone performs a Nazi salute, they are Nazis.”
Southwick told the court that the first time he met Deeming was at an event for local councillors, where he told her she would make a good MP. She allegedly replied: “have you Googled me?”, and referred to her stance on issues such as Safe Schools as “controversial”.
“That was very, very odd,” he said.
On Tuesday, Bach, who has since quit politics, told the court he was “never that surprised to learn that meetings of the Liberal party may have been taped”, given there was a history of its gatherings being “surreptitiously” recorded.
Bach said on his first day in parliament in 2020, he had lunch with former premier Ted Baillieu who “pressed upon me that in the Liberal party, many things are taped”.
The trial continues.
