4 hours ago
8
July 3, 2026 — 5:08pm
It was never going to be easy for the Liberal Party to break up with Moira Deeming, even though this had become a mutually destructive relationship.
Deeming had grown deeply resentful of her “tormentors” – a word she used this week to describe some of her party room colleagues – and the party well sick of Deeming.
It wasn’t just that she made a ridiculous, unsubstantiated allegation of assault against Matthew Guy, although this is bad enough.
It was also a problem that Deeming could no longer be trusted to carry out her basic duties as an upper house MP – turning up to party room meetings, answering the bell for divisions, staying in parliament late into the morning when this is required to debate legislation.
No one knows what the make-up of the next parliament will be but most likely, the numbers will be tight. If the Liberal Party is elected to government, it must be able to depend on all its members in both chambers.
It can no longer depend on Deeming.
Deeming, through her protracted and bitter defamation proceedings against former leader John Pesutto in 2023 and 2024, retained the support of people in the Liberal party room, in the federal parliament and in conservative corners of the party organisation.
She was, for a time, a cause célèbre.
Her successful case against Pesutto destroyed his leadership and nearly bankrupted him. It split the party, and, for many voters, made the Victorian Liberals synonymous with political dysfunction.
Yet always, Deeming had influential backers in the party.
That is no longer the case.
As this masthead reported a week ago, the Liberals are done with Moira Deeming.
On Friday, we witnessed the mortifying spectacle of an MP launching Supreme Court action, with all the cost and hassle such matters entail, to stop a party that no longer wants her from using its own rules to show her the door.
Those rules make it clear that when it comes to who gets to stand for the party as a candidate at an election, the state executive – the governing board of the party – has the final say.
It was the state executive which in 2022 and again in March endorsed Deeming as a candidate for the Western Metropolitan Region. It is now the state executive seeking to determine whether it still wants Deeming as a candidate.
Deeming’s resort to legal action suggests it is clear to her, as it is to anyone who follows the murky inner workings of the Liberal Party, that overwhelmingly, the state executive has turned against her.
Deeming is all but alone in refusing to accept that a difficult and at times toxic political marriage is over.
Friday’s brief, stop-start preliminary hearing in the Supreme Court shed little light on how she plans to argue her case when it reaches trial on July 17.
Her barrister, Ganesh Jegatheesan, flagged there would be an argument about natural justice and mentioned his client’s health. We’ll know the arguments soon enough when the parties provide written submissions to the court.
It is difficult to see any outcome, however, where an Australian court would direct a political party to stand or not stand a particular candidate at an election.
The Liberal Party will not move against Deeming before she has her final day in court but their relationship, a relationship gone very bad, cannot be repaired with court orders.
Deeming’s time as a Liberal MP is fast coming to an end, even if she can’t yet see it.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
