Court finds Victorian Liberal leader defamed then partyroom colleague when referring to rally that was gatecrashed by far-right
Victoria’s opposition leader John Pesutto defamed fellow Liberal MP Moira Deeming in comments made after neo-Nazis gatecrashed a rally she helped organise, a federal court has found.
The court heard how Pesutto had used a “dossier” to justify Deeming’s expulsion from the Liberal party room, though she ended up being suspended as part of a compromise. During the trial, which ran over three weeks, Deeming’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, had argued Pesutto’s push to expel the MP from the party had “nothing to do” with the rally but her views on “sex-based rights”.
She said while Pesutto never explicitly called Deeming a Nazi, an ordinary person would have inferred it based on his comments.
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