Moira Deeming's battle with her own party now comes with a personal price tag. The Victorian Liberal MP told the state executive she's "already facing bankruptcy" over more than $1.55 million in legal costs, in an email reported by Sky News, as the executive prepares to meet on Friday night to vote on whether to dump her from the ticket she won at preselection.
It's a bind largely of her own making. The $1.55 million is the money the party arranged to cover what former leader John Pesutto owed her from her defamation win. Deeming objected to that loan, allies of hers challenged it in the Supreme Court, and the case has frozen the funds in trust, leaving her unable to repay NSW property developer Hilton Grugeon, who bankrolled her case against Pesutto and is now demanding his money back.
The state executive is expected to disendorse her as the candidate for Western Metropolitan at the 28 November election, a motion that needs the support of 75% of the 19 member body. The trigger is her refusal to apologise to former leader Matthew Guy over an assault allegation the CCTV did not support, and that refusal is legally loaded: an apology on Guy's terms could hand him a defamation claim, leaving her cornered either way. Days earlier she dropped the Supreme Court injunction she'd used to delay an earlier meeting, and she's likely to be left carrying the bill for it.
The injunction Moira Deeming dropped on Wednesday still leaves her with the bill
Deeming bought herself time at the start of July by filing a Supreme Court injunction against state president Brian Loughnane, freezing an earlier attempt to disendorse her. On Wednesday she withdrew it, saying the injunction had "achieved exactly what it was intended to achieve" and that she'd handed the executive a statement and a mediation proposal.
Dropping a case doesn't erase its cost. Having brought the action and then abandoned it, Deeming now risks being ordered to pay costs, a bill she's added to her own ledger for a fight that delayed the vote by a fortnight and changed none of the arithmetic. The executive can still dump her, and on Friday it's expected to.
The $1.55 million at the centre of it all: the loan meant to save John Pesutto
The bankruptcy warning traces back to a debt another Liberal owes her. Deeming won her defamation case against former leader John Pesutto in 2024, when Federal Court Justice David O'Callaghan found he'd defamed her by imputing she associated with neo-Nazis. He was ordered to pay her $315,000 in damages and about $2.3 million in costs.
Pesutto couldn't raise it. To save him from bankruptcy and a by-election in his seat of Hawthorn, the party lent him $1.55 million from its investment fund. Deeming objected, and a group of six senior Liberals aligned with her sued the party, arguing the loan breached its constitution. That case is still before the Supreme Court, and the money has sat frozen in her lawyers' trust account ever since.
Hilton Grugeon wants his money back, and Moira Deeming is the one on the hook
The money she can't touch is money she owes. NSW property developer Hilton Grugeon helped bankroll her case against Pesutto, and his lawyers have now requested repayment, a step that could begin bankruptcy proceedings against her. Deeming has told the party she'll withdraw the frozen funds to pay him.
In a twist she's clearly frustrated by, Deeming is a defendant in the loan case herself, because the party paid the money to her rather than to Pesutto.
"I am the only defendant in the Supreme Court case who is not indemnified by the Party because I am not a member of the State Executive," she told executive members. "If the Party had transferred the money into the bank account of the man who asked for it, he would be the defendant racking up legal bills instead of me."
Matthew Guy is still owed an apology, and the CCTV is what settled it
Underneath all of it sits the dispute she could have closed months ago. Deeming's police complaint accused Guy of grabbing her in a headlock at a Macedonian community gala dinner on 23 May. Victoria Police reviewed the footage and said "there was no offence detected". Guy denies any wrongdoing and says Deeming owes him a public apology for dragging his name and reputation through the mud.
Deeming has defended herself in a 12 page statement to the executive, saying she was instructed to make a police report and that punishing her for following party policy would set a dangerous precedent. She says she's only ever refused to apologise for "making a fraudulent bad faith police complaint and leaking this to defame him", characterisations she insists are false. She's also asked colleagues for unity, telling them she wants to "mediate this out of existence".
One apology, urged by Jess Wilson and Pauline Hanson, could have spared her the rest
The bankruptcy exposure is its own tangle, years in the making and largely separate from the Guy affair. The disendorsement is not. Opposition Leader Jess Wilson asked Deeming to apologise to Guy and was refused. Pauline Hanson, ruling out a One Nation lifeline, put it plainly: "you don't do that to your fellow colleagues". The court fight, the legal costs and Friday's vote all flow from a single refusal, and an apology is the one thing that might have stopped it. There's a reason she won't give one.
Why Moira Deeming can't simply say sorry: an apology would hand Matthew Guy the case
There's a reason the refusal is worded so precisely. Deeming's lawyers say the complaint was made "honestly, in good faith", that she "will not apologise for something she had not done", and that any suggestion it was falsely made is "highly defamatory". An apology on Guy's terms would mean conceding the opposite, and lawyers on both sides know it. Guy has said she can deal with him "the honourable and easy way, or a harder way".
That's the bind. Apologise, and she risks the very defamation exposure the careful wording is built to keep at bay, while cutting the ground from under any action of her own against those who've called the complaint false. Hold the line, and she loses her candidacy on Friday and wears the costs of a case she's already dropped. It's a corner of her own making, and there's no clean way out of it.
Instead the Liberals will spend Friday night dumping a candidate their own members preselected, five months out from an election. And One Nation keeps polling ahead of Labor in Victoria while they do it.
