Moira Deeming wants peace with the party she took to the Supreme Court yesterday. In private messages to colleagues on Friday night, first reported by the Herald Sun, the upper house MP said she "deeply grieves" the turmoil engulfing the Victorian Liberals and wants the dispute settled before her case against state president Brian Loughnane returns to court on 17 July.
"Please allow me to tell you how keenly aware I am of the fact this must be negatively impacting you, and I deeply grieve it and regret it," she reportedly wrote. "I am doing my best to fix it."
The messages landed hours after the party told the court it wouldn't proceed with the Friday night meeting at which she was widely expected to be disendorsed.
"It may not appear so to you right now, but my actions today were designed to secure the reprieve needed to avoid a slip into self destruction, and mediate this out of existence for all our sakes," she reportedly wrote, adding that she was seeking "internal settlement with all involved, even tonight".
The question inside the party: is this for the Liberals, or for Moira Deeming
Read cold, the sequence isn't complicated. Victoria Police reviewed the footage behind her complaint against Matthew Guy and found "there was no offence detected". Colleagues from Opposition Leader Jess Wilson down asked her to apologise and withdraw the complaint. She has done neither. What she did was file a Supreme Court action against the party president, after which the party shelved its meeting and the unity texts arrived that evening. Sky News reports senior Liberals are increasingly concerned the saga is overshadowing the Coalition's entire campaign against the Allan government.
Deeming rejects the harshest reading of that sequence.
"I'm not above helping the party save face but it is not true that I made a deliberate or reckless false allegation, and it is not true that I caused anyone to be defamed," she reportedly told colleagues.
Her lawyers say the complaint was made "honestly, in good faith and only as a matter of last resort", and that senior party officials advised her to go to police in the first place.
Party members will make their own judgment, and they're entitled to weigh the pattern alongside the explanation. A mediated settlement can end a court case. It can't order anyone to forget how the case got there, and it doesn't restore trust by consent order. With Jacinta Allan's record handing the opposition its best material in a decade, trust in the people carrying that argument matters more right now than it ever has.
Matthew Guy is still waiting for an apology while the settlement talk starts
Federal Liberal senator Sarah Henderson put the internal mood on the record.
"I'm personally disappointed that Moira did not withdraw her police complaint and apologise to Matthew Guy," she told Sky News. "I really feel for Matthew Guy. The accusations that were made against him were completely unfounded."
Guy's position hasn't moved either. He says the CCTV proves he didn't do what was alleged, and after the police finding he declared that he and his entire family were owed an apology. Deeming told colleagues the dispute has left her "very unwell". Nobody should doubt the toll runs in both directions here. The difference is that the police finding sits on Guy's side of the ledger, and the apology he asked for still hasn't come.
What the 17 July hearing now decides for Brian Loughnane's party
The case is back before the court on 17 July. Between now and then the party has a choice with no clean option: settle with a candidate its own federal senators are criticising in public, or fight a trial with its president as the named defendant through weeks it wanted to spend on Labor.
The Coalition needs the next five months to be about Jacinta Allan. Every day this runs, it's about Moira Deeming instead, and One Nation currently sits ahead of both major parties in Victorian polling while the two of them argue about everything except the state.
