Victoria MP Moira Deeming has announced she’ll be moving forward with her long-threatened defamation action against state Liberal leader John Pesutto.
In a statement Deeming said her attempts to get the Liberal leader to make a public apology to her had not been successful and she would now be moving forward with her defamation action.
Deeming and Pesutto met in September and were unable to settle their differences, the first term MP was seeking an apology, reinstatement to the party and financial damages.
Deeming said she made one last attempt to resolve the dispute last week.
“Unfortunately, the mediation failed,” she said in the statement posted to social media.
“It is therefore with great regret as a current Liberal Party member, that I am now left with no option but to lodge my defamation case against Mr Pesutto in court.
“For the sake of my family, I have to bring this matter to a conclusion as it has dominated our lives for most of this year.” Deeming said.
The Victorian Liberal leader moved to have Deeming excluded from the parliamentary Liberal party after she attended a Let Women Speak event organised by British provocateur Kellie-Jay Keen in March.
Keen’s tour around Australia drew large groups of counter-protesters and at the Melbourne event a neo-Nazi group appeared adjacent to where the Let Women Speak event was taking place on the stairs of the parliament house.
Pesutto’s first attempt at removing Deeming from the party saw her suspended from the party room for nine months, but after she threatened legal action, her colleagues voted to remove her permanently from the parliamentary party.
Since then, she has remained a member of the wider Liberal party, while sitting on the crossbench in the Victorian parliament.
Pesutto has declared he’ll fight Deeming in court, saying he had attempted to resolve their differences on many occasions over the previous months.
“The issue has always been whether Mrs Deeming called out or distanced herself from neo-Nazi protesters and references when asked to do so by senior Liberals,” he said in a statement on Monday.
“I will vigorously defend the Liberal Party and myself in any proceedings and will not be asking the party to cover any legal fees.”
OIP Staff
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