Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has blasted Victorian MPs who voted against readmitted ousted MP Moira Deeming to the party room.
Abbott shared his thoughts on his social media account on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“A shameful result from the Victorian Liberal party room. How can someone elected as a Liberal be expelled on the basis of a lie and not be readmitted once the truth is there for all to see?” Abbot wrote.
“Especially right before Christmas, the season of goodwill, this is a truly contemptible failure to act with honour and decency.” he said.
Ahead of the vote that was held on Friday morning Abbott said it was “inexplicable” that MPs would not be reaching out to Deeming and asking her to rejoin the parliamentary Liberal party.
MPs met this morning to decide if Deeming should be invited back into the Liberal party room in the wake of her defamation win over leader John Pesutto.
Sixteen votes were needed to secure the absolute majority required to rescind her banishment. The vote was split with fourteen MPs voted on either side of the equation. Pesutto used his casting vote to uphold the expulsion, but it had not achieved the majority required.
MPs gathered at Parliament House in Victoria a week after the federal court found that Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto had defamed first term MP Moira Deeming on five occasions, awarding her damages of $300,000.
Pesutto pushed for Deeming to kicked out of the party room after she helped organise the 2023 Let Women Speak event alongside British activist Kellie-Jay Keen. The event drew thousands of protesters onto the streets of Melbourne, and a Neo-Nazi group appeared adjacent to the speakers.
At first colleagues suspended her for nine months, but after she made more comments in the media and threated legal action against the leader MPs made her banishment permanent.
Deeming followed through on her threat to sue, winning the case and leaving Pesutto on the hook for what could be millions of dollars of legal fees. The court ruled that statements made by Pesutto in the days following the event that suggesting a link Deeming and the Neo-Nazi group were defamatory.
