Moira Deeming has dropped the Supreme Court case she brought against her own Liberal Party, and the reason she's given for needing it is a story in itself. The injunction, she says, was what finally gave her time to work out what a headlock is. This is the same Moira Deeming who accused former leader Matthew Guy of putting her in one at a gala dinner, a complaint Victoria Police reviewed on CCTV before finding no offence.
Deeming, who holds an upper house seat for Western Metropolitan, sued state president Brian Loughnane on 3 July to stop the party dumping her from its ticket. She announced late on Wednesday that she'd withdrawn the case and offered to mediate instead. What she still hasn't done is apologise to Guy, which is why she's expected to be disendorsed anyway ahead of the 28 November election.
"Learn the difference between a headlock and a collar-tie grip": Moira Deeming in her own words
Deeming's explanation for what the court fight achieved has to be read in full to be believed.
"Having been overseas and unwell when the story broke and jetlagged and unwell when the disendorsement meeting was called, the injunction gave me time to recover, review all the facts, learn the difference between a headlock and a collar-tie grip, and gather my thoughts," she said.
She's told her lawyer she won't apologise for the complaint, even as she now concedes she misunderstood what a headlock was. An MP accused a colleague of an assault, took the party to the Supreme Court over the fallout, and has emerged saying the value of the exercise was the chance to learn what one is.
"The injunction has achieved exactly what it intended to achieve," Deeming told the party
Deeming announced the withdrawal in a statement posted to social media late on Wednesday. "The injunction has achieved exactly what it intended to achieve," she wrote. Earlier that day she'd sent a 12 page statement to the party's state executive with a mediation proposal, and it was that proposal, she said, that let her end the court action.
"The state executive, having all the evidence before them, can now decide whether to pursue mediation or reconvene to disendorse me," she said.
She framed the whole episode as a matter of process. "From beginning to end, I progressed the issue in good faith, respected the confidentiality of all involved, submitted myself to the instructions and policies of the party and obeyed the law rather than run it through the media," she said, adding: "For my part, I will continue doing my work serving Victorians and fighting Labor."
Matthew Guy is still owed an apology, and the police finding still sits on his side
Deeming's police complaint accused Guy of grabbing her "violently" in a headlock at a Macedonian community gala dinner on 23 May. Victoria Police reviewed the CCTV and found no offence had been detected. Guy denies the allegation flatly and says the footage clears him.
He wants an apology, and in June he made the demand in public. "Moira Deeming owes me a public apology. I'm owed an apology by the premier and the attorney-general," he said outside parliament. "They can come to me the honourable and easy way, or a harder way." That apology still hasn't come.
Even Moira Deeming's own supporters are said to be exhausted as the axe looms
Withdrawing the case hasn't saved her candidacy. Deeming's previous internal backers have grown "exhausted" by the run of issues around her and the party, and she's now all but certain to be dumped from the Western Metropolitan ticket. Opposition Leader Jess Wilson wouldn't be drawn on Wednesday, saying only that the matter was "before the courts".
The reversal in support is stark. In March, Sky News host Peta Credlin and former prime minister Tony Abbott both wrote references urging colleagues to preselect her. Credlin is married to Loughnane, the very president Deeming took to court, and both she and Abbott have since withdrawn their support over the Guy allegations, The Australian has reported. Deeming pleaded for unity with the party earlier this month, texting colleagues she was trying to "mediate this out of existence".
Pauline Hanson already shut the One Nation door with six words
The one exit that might have kept her in parliament with a party behind her is closed. Pauline Hanson ruled out recruiting Deeming to One Nation this month, telling Melbourne's 3AW "No, I do not want her." Her reasoning was about how Deeming treated a colleague, not ideology.
"Based on her allegations against a Liberal Party colleague of hers, where no charges were laid, she refused to make an apology, and you don't do that to your fellow colleagues," Hanson said.
It's a telling line from the party that keeps drawing conservative defectors. One Nation currently sits ahead of both major parties in Victorian polling, so it can afford to be choosy, and Hanson has drawn her line at exactly the point Deeming won't move on.
Why conservatives can't reconcile it: the "woke right" charge against Moira Deeming
Deeming built her name on a single, consistent idea, that objective biological reality should outrank subjective identity. It's the argument behind her defence of sex based rights and single sex spaces, the fight that made her a conservative cause and that saw her win a defamation case against former leader John Pesutto, who was found to have wrongly linked her to neo-Nazis.
Writing in The Australian, Anthony Galloway argues that consistency is what unravelled over the Guy complaint. The police finding went against her, and Deeming has explained that her perception of the moment was shaped by her history as a victim of sexual assault. That may go to whether she acted in good faith. It doesn't, in her colleagues' view, turn the footage into an assault. Galloway's point is that a politician who insists objective facts must prevail ended up asking others to accept her subjective experience over what the evidence showed, the very move British commentator Konstantin Kisin calls the "woke right".
Whether or not the label sticks, it captures why the party she's fought for three years can't simply let this one go.
