Expelled Liberal vows she’s ‘not going anywhere’

When asked repeatedly by the media at his press-conference on Friday, shortly after Deeming was expelled from the parliamentary party room, Liberal Leader John Pesutto refused to offer any grounds. Unlike his earlier motion that falsely referenced neo-Nazi links, a motion that failed, this time there was no rationale for the move. If you didn’t know better, you would think that some of her parliamentary Liberal colleagues were always determined to try and remove her because they didn’t agree with her stand on issues like single-sex spaces for women and girls. But that may well be their first mistake, because Moira Deeming is a lot more than a single-issue politician.

And their second mistake? She’s not going anywhere.

You might have been expelled from the Liberal parliamentary team on Friday but you’re still a Liberal Party member. Is there any way you can be bullied into resigning from the Liberal Party?

That will never happen. If they want to get me out of the party, then it’s going to be another public round of beating me up for doing nothing wrong. And if they want to have another go, they are welcome to it, but I know how much support I’ve got amongst party members because thousands and thousands of them have contacted my office since March. I will never resign. I will never quit. I will not do their dirty work for them, I have much too much dignity for that.

And I am not going to help them to smear, or label as extremist, a whole movement of women who just want their ordinary and reasonable, rights protected.

Let’s go back to that rally. Why did you attend and why is the issue of women’s rights so important to you?

It was no secret that I would go to the rally. I actually got up in the parliament and said I was going and asked Labor’s minister for women to come with me. No one in the Liberal Party can say they were surprised I went because I was public about going and no one told me before the rally not to go either. I just care about the right of women and girls to spaces that are theirs alone – toilets, changerooms, prisons and more. I don’t believe it’s right for a biological male to be able to remove his clothing in front of women and girls in a public space. I just don’t. And I know so many people agree with me but feel too scared to speak up. I was sexually abused as a child, I know what happens if you don’t speak up so I am prepared to speak up for them because I don’t want what happened to me, to happen to others.

And good men understand this, good men support this view because they have wives, sisters and daughters too.

A big part of the issue was the fact that the rally was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis and this false claim that somehow, they were connected to the organisers. When John Pesutto first tried to expel you, and you were labelled a neo-Nazi sympathiser, what was your reaction?

It was so offensive to me because connected to Nazis in any way is the benchmark of evil. I did international relations, I was an English/history teacher, I was partly raised by my uncle who was a Holocaust survivor. This is what you don’t want society to turn into. It’s why morality is so important. It is why you can’t have, as your highest virtue, staying alive. I tell my kids all the time, if your highest goal is staying alive, you will do evil. That’s how they got into that situation. If you are not willing to die, I know it sounds melodramatic, but if you are not willing to die, if you are not prepared to have ‘doing the right thing’ above everything else, evil is the risk.

After Pesutto’s first motion to expel you failed, part of the compromise deal was that you would accept a nine-month suspension to help him save face, and in return, there would be a joint statement (from you and Pesutto) clearing your name from allegations of any neo-Nazi links. Why didn’t that happen?

I tried. For over six weeks, I tried to get John to honour what he had told his colleagues he would do. Straight after that meeting on March 27, we agreed to meet with his office to draft the statement. He told people he would join me to nut it all out, but he never turned up. I tried to speak with him, to make contact with him via text and email. But since that day, he has never spoken with me or returned any messages.

So how did you negotiate then?

I wasn’t allowed to speak with anyone directly. I had to go through another Liberal colleague of mine (veteran Liberal MP Kim Wells) and when talks hit the wall 10 days ago, that’s when I sent Pesutto and his leadership team an email at 6.45am putting in writing what had been agreed the night before, that they had until 2pm to sort this all out, to do what he promised with the joint statement clearing my name, or I would bring in lawyers to mediate things. By wanting legal help, someone neutral and outside of politics to help bring this all to a head after six weeks of trying internally had failed, I have ended up expelled.

So you didn’t want to sue the Liberal Party?

Absolutely not. I just wanted mediation. I wanted to get things back on track. When I saw media reports that somehow this was about me suing the party, I contacted the Liberal Party President to tell him very clearly that I would not sue the party. I haven’t and I won’t. My grievance is with the Liberal leader, John Pesutto.

After the first motion failed, did you think it would stop or did you think certain elements inside the party room would continue to hunt you anyway?

It took me a while to really admit to myself that I didn’t think they had any intention of doing what they said they would do. This is why I kept asking for the minutes of the original meeting (March 27). I just didn’t think anyone would try to blatantly change what the party room had agreed as the terms of my suspension, that the team would allow it, or that the party leader wouldn’t honour it.

You mean holding back the official minutes?

Yes, I just didn’t think anyone would get away with it. But we know Renee Heath came under real pressure over the minutes (as the official note taker) and she has now been removed from that role, and at Friday’s meeting, apparently her minutes were replaced with a new version from John Pesutto. I mean how does that happen?

It’s been a really rugged time for you. A baptism of fire for a very new MP. How do you feel after Friday?

I feel completely betrayed. I honoured the terms of my suspension, but John Pesutto did not. I feel done over, like they were stringing me along, hoping to find some other way to get rid of me because they don’t like me views on issues like women, and they’ve already worked out I have had these views for a long, long time and I am committed to defending them.

You’re a mum of four kids, sort of toll has this taken on you personally?

It’s been awful. Our whole household has been on edge. The children keep looking out the window for suspicious cars because we’ve had the media camped outside our home for days on end. We even had someone push through our back fence into the garden. I’ve got little ones and they don’t feel safe. How is that right? As well, I find it terrifying and stressful that my children might find out about my own sexual abuse that I was forced to publicly reveal to defend myself, because I haven’t even had those sorts of conversations with my own children.

You told your Liberal colleagues about your sexual abuse as a child, how does it feel now having told them something so private, that this is where you end up?

I don’t understand them. People keep telling me that it is victim-blaming. I mean where is the media’s outrage about this false dossier built off a Wikipedia page that wasn’t even related to me? Why am I being blamed for my own demise when I was relentlessly hunted by a pack of people who were never going to stop? And now by trying to defend myself, I am somehow in the wrong? I don’t accept that.

What happens now to your legal action against John Pesutto?

I will leave that to my lawyers to handle. Sadly, I know that I cannot defend my reputation or have my family exonerated from these smears using internal (Liberal) processes. I gave John weeks and weeks to do what he promised the party room back in March that he would do, that in return for me accepting a nine-month suspension, he would issue a joint statement clearing my name. He didn’t honour his commitment, so we are here because of him.

Can the Victorian Liberal Party win under John Pesutto?

That’s a question for his colleagues. But it’s also I guess an even bigger question for Liberal Party members and supporters across the state. I don’t want to speak for them, but this is something they will think carefully about, I am sure. I judge people on character and honesty so people can look at how John has behaved and draw their own conclusions, Peta.

You live in the sort of suburb that should be Liberal territory given the shift in vote in the old blue ribbon seats to the Teals, but do you think the party understands the issues that people in your community care about?

No they don’t. I care about a whole lot of issues, but just on the issue of women and girls and their right to single-sex safety, I think the Liberal Party leadership is disconnected from Liberal voters. Our supporters care about this issue, our party leadership does not.

I was once told by a colleague, on behalf of the leadership, that they do not want to deal with this issue of sex-based rights at all. Instead, I was told to try and grow our voter support in the western Melbourne, amongst women and multicultural communities, without ever mentioning this issue. I laughed and said to them, you are crazy if you think I can hold open-forum meetings with people in the suburbs where I live and that this issue won’t come up.

You believe this is an issue that Liberals are dodging?

Yes, I do. We need to have an answer on parental rights and on the rights of women.

That’s because Daniel Andrews keeps his pushing hard on his left agenda isn’t it? I mean the Liberals can’t just hope it all goes away because it won’t, will it?

That’s right and it’s already coming up time and time again in schools. I’m a former teacher, I taught for 15 years, it’s hitting parents in schools and the knowledge of what’s happening at a local level is only building. Everybody knows about it. Everybody is uncomfortable. But why would anyone move from Labor to Liberal if we aren’t any different, and don’t have an answer? Why?

You have Liberal MPs that say they agree with you privately, don’t you?

Yes, I do. So many of them say, I agree with you privately, Moira, but I just can’t run the media gauntlet. And I say why not? They say they’re scared of media criticism and I say to them, then don’t expect me to be grateful for your support behind closed doors because the women and children won’t be grateful that you agreed in secret but couldn’t come out and defend them.

Now that you are on crossbench, what are you going to focus on?

Well there’s heaps of issues out in the West. The overcrowding, the underfunding. The roads. I mean people are actually having car crashes because of our roads. We don’t have a decent health system. One of my deepest goals, probably because I am a teacher, is that we complain about all of these things (as Liberals), but we are no good at explaining the connection between Labor, their policies, their philosophy of big government, and the outcomes that people in my community have to live with, day to day.

*****

So there you have it. I have been a political campaigner for two decades and around the Liberal Party much of my adult life. Moira Deeming might be new, and there’s a lot she still has to learn but take it from me, she is the real deal. Maybe, that’s her problem? There’s no doubt she poses a threat to all the mediocre time-servers that populate modern political parties and that are challenged by conviction candidates. If that’s the case, we need more Moira’s, not less.