In a landmark legal battle, ousted Victorian MP Moira Deeming has won a defamation lawsuit against Liberal leader John Pesutto, securing $300,000 (approximately £156,000) in damages after the court found he falsely portrayed her as aligned with neo-Nazi ideologies.
The case, stemming from Ms Deeming’s involvement with a gender-critical women’s rights rally, has thrown the Victorian Liberal Party into turmoil while also raising important questions about the limits of defamation defences, and the point at which free speech slips into maligning politicians who justifiably enjoy the confidence of the electorate.
In March 2023, Deeming, a first-term Liberal MP, attended and briefly spoke at a ‘Let Women Speak’ rally in Melbourne. The event, organised to promote women’s rights, was overshadowed by a group of neo-Nazi demonstrators who appeared uninvited and disrupted proceedings.
Despite Deeming – and every other gender-critical attendee – strongly condemning the extremists and denying any association with Nazism, the reaction among trans activists and their political allies was swift and brutal.
Liberal leader John Pesutto accused his colleague of knowingly associating with extremists and moved to expel her from the party.
In support of his expulsion motion, Pesutto said: “This is not an issue about free speech but a member of the parliamentary party associating with people whose views are abhorrent to my values, the values of the Liberal Party and the wider community.”
It was an extraordinary accusation – one almost certain to inflict significant harm on a politician’s reputation. This is especially true in Victoria, which was the first Australian jurisdiction to outlaw the Nazi salute.
While Ms Deeming narrowly avoided expulsion, she was suspended for nine months.
In December 2023 she filed a defamation lawsuit against Pesutto, alleging that his public statements falsely linking her to neo-Nazi ideologies were damaging to her reputation and satisfied the legal requirements of defamation law in that right-minded Australians would now think less of her.
Ms Deeming argued that the hateful private messages she received, coupled with the spiteful social media posts following Pesutto’s remarks, served as clear evidence of the harm caused. The many appalling examples included within Justice David O’Callaghan’s judgment make it difficult to disagree with her assessment.
The case culminated in a Federal Court trial in September 2024, where additional evidence, including secretly recorded meetings, painted a damning picture of the internal dynamics within the Victorian Liberal Party.
On December 12th, 2024, Justice David O’Callaghan ruled in Ms Deeming’s favour.
In a damning court judgment, Justice O’Callaghan found that a media release, radio and TV interviews, press conference and a dossier Pesutto created to justify her expulsion from the party room conveyed that Ms Deeming “knowingly associated” and “sympathises” with neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The judge added:
The imputations that I have found to have been carried are very serious ones. In my view […] they were inherently likely, using mass media to communicate a message to the general public in Victoria, to cause serious harm to Mrs Ms Deeming’s reputation. That is especially so in circumstances where the leader of her own Parliamentary party was moving for her expulsion from it.
Despite the finding that the comments caused harm, was it still possible for Pesutto to invoke the ‘contextual truth’, ‘public interest’ or ‘honest opinion’ defences allowed under the Victorian Defamation Act 2005? Justice O’Callaghan thought not:
In the case of the media release, the 3AW and ABC interviews and the press conference, when bandying around words like “Nazi” and “Nazi sympathisers” and people who “associate” with them or “help” them and the like, it was incumbent on Mr Pesutto to be careful not to convey a meaning that he did not intend.
Elsewhere, the judgment states: “The use of loose language provides greater opportunity for the ordinary reasonable reader to infer adverse meaning from the published matter than the use of precise and unambiguous language. And Mr Pesutto knew as much.”
Alongside the $300,000 in damages, Pesutto faces potential legal costs exceeding $2 million.
The Liberal opposition leader said he was now seeking legal advice as to whether he should apologise to Ms Deeming and if he should appeal against the judgment.
In a press conference following the judgment, Ms Ms Deeming said she was “unjustly expelled” from the Liberal Party and expected she would return.
“It makes sense to me that that would happen. I don’t know what they’re actually going to do,” she said.
“I have every right to be there, I did nothing wrong. All the accusations made about me, they were just disproven in court.”
