John Pesutto’s lawyer has rejected claims the Victorian Liberal leader created a “false narrative” in order to expel Moira Deeming, telling a court he acted to “cauterise the damage” after neo-Nazis gatecrashed a rally the MP helped organise.
Deeming, who now sits on the crossbench after her expulsion from the state parliamentary Liberal party, is suing Pesutto for allegedly falsely portraying her as a Nazi sympathiser after she spoke at the Let Women Speak rally held on 18 March 2023, which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Pesutto has denied the claim.
In her closing arguments, Deeming’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, asserted that Pesutto’s push to expel her from the party had “nothing to do” with the rally.
“The decision to expel was so irrational and clearly not based on the reasons he put forward to the press,” Chrysanthou told the federal court in Melbourne.
“Mrs Deeming was expelled because Mr Pesutto found it annoying to have to answer press questions about her whenever she made a statement about sex-based rights.”
She said Pesutto believed he lost his seat of Hawthorn at the 2018 election due to the Liberals’ focus on “non-mainstream issues” – such as “the ones Mrs Deeming talks about” – and argued he created a “false narrative” that the MP “associates with Nazis” to “as a pretext to just get rid of her”.
But Pesutto’s lawyer, Matthew Collins KC, emphatically rejected Chrysanthou’s theory, describing it as a “conspiracy” that was not put to either Pesutto or the Liberal leadership team in cross-examination nor explored in evidence.
“[She] presented a very extreme political problem for the alternative government … he had to get out there and get ahead of this. He had to cauterise the damage … because of what Mrs Deeming had done,” Collins said, before he listed previous Liberal scandals, including an infamous dinner between the former Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy and an alleged mafia boss.
“Mr Guy went to a dinner with Mr Madafferi – the lobster with a mobster – that did political damage. [Bernie] Finn, Mrs Deeming’s predecessor [as Liberal MP for the Western Metropolitan Region], shared a [doctored image] of the then premier [Daniel Andrews] wearing a Nazi uniform, that did real damage.
“Mrs Deeming’s conduct on the 18th and 19th [of March] and her inaction thereafter caused serious political problems. That might be unfair and I might wish for a world in which debate is more nuanced, but that’s not the world we live in.”
Deeming alleges that Pesutto defamed her in four publications after the rally: a media release, interviews on ABC News Breakfast and 3AW Radio, a press conference and a dossier justifying her expulsion.
Pesutto’s legal team have relied on the legal defences of claims of honest opinion, contextual truth, public interest and qualified privilege.
Collins said that as opposition leader Pesutto was “uniquely placed to judge the politics of the matter” and felt it was “necessary to explain” to the public why he was moving to expel Deeming.
“[He is in the] position of the alternative premier of the state, not the position of a judge or barrister. Could a person in his position reasonably believe that these publications were in the public interest? That’s the essence of the defence,” he said.
But Chrysanthou argued Pesutto characterised his opinion as “fact” and did not take reasonable care before publishing, meaning he was not protected from the defences.
On Tuesday, Chrysanthou went through the two media interviews in forensic detail, arguing it was clear through Pesutto’s “tone”, “demeanour” and “words” that he was “going into bat” for himself against Deeming.
Referring to the media release, she said Pesutto made a “deliberate decision” to exclude from a sentence from the draft, which referred to Nazi’s “gatecrashing” Deeming’s event.
She argued that the release, sent to about 750 journalists, could lead an ordinary reader to think Deeming “organised, attended and spoke at a Nazi rally”.
Chrysanthou also accused Pesutto of providing “dishonest evidence” about releasing the dossier, which he told the court he did because he believed the Age had already obtained a copy, and it was in the public interest.
“He truly believed that it was a matter of political expediency – his own political expediency – to publish this material,” she said.
“His credibility as a politician, his personal interests as a politician are not in the public interest.”
She claimed he did not disclose that a meeting was secretly recorded by the deputy Liberal leader, David Southwick, due to a “consciousness of guilt”.
Beginning his closing arguments on Wednesday afternoon, Collins told the court there should no dispute that the neo-Nazis were there to “support” the headline speaker of the rally, the UK gender critical activist Kellie-Jay Keen.
He said the rally was “anti-trans”, given Keen began by “provoking” the counter-protest.
“The rally was an anti-trans rally, all of the media reported it that way and they were right,” Collins said.
His closing arguments are expected to conclude on Thursday, with justice David O’Callaghan likely to deliver his findings in December.
