Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, July seventeen, twenty twenty six. Taxpayers have been
Speaker 1: charged more than eighty thousand dollars to send bureaucrats from
Speaker 1: Intelligence Services, the Defense Forces and the Tax Office to
Speaker 1: a women's leadership summit headlined by former New.
Speaker 2: Zealand Prime Minister Jacinder r Dern.
Speaker 1: Young Australians will be hit much harder by the government's
Speaker 1: reformed capital gains tax than older investors. That's according to
Speaker 1: a new analysis by The Australian. You can check out
Speaker 1: those details live now at The Australian dot com dot au.
Speaker 1: Moira Deeming, the unpredictable Victorian Liberal MP who took down
Speaker 1: her own party leader, has come a cropper in a
Speaker 1: big way and faces the political wilderness. Today we look
Speaker 1: at how this straight talking outsider found herself at odds
Speaker 1: with her own colleagues and where she'll turn next. Our
Speaker 1: Victorian Political editor, Anthony Galloway is here.
Speaker 2: In just a moment, she blazed into politics.
Speaker 3: If the LGBTQI can have their rights, that's fine, but
Speaker 3: why does it involve taking away everybody else's rights.
Speaker 1: And now Moiradeeming seems to be blazing out again. Morademing's
Speaker 1: political future is hanging by a thread this afternoon, as
Speaker 1: the controversial Liberal MP faces being dumped by the party.
Speaker 4: She couldn't have picked the worst issue, I think to
Speaker 4: kind of alienate them over.
Speaker 1: Anthony Galloway is The Australian's Victorian political editor, so this.
Speaker 4: Kind of really came out as a blue but kind
Speaker 4: of confirms for a lot of people. Is she more
Speaker 4: interested in fighting her colleagues than trying to beat labor.
Speaker 1: Victoria's Liberals are moving to dump Deming from their top
Speaker 1: ticket ahead of the forthcoming state election. It all stems
Speaker 1: from Deming's accusation that another MP, Matthew Guy, put her
Speaker 1: in a headlock at a community event. Guy vociferously rejects
Speaker 1: that claim, and the police say there is no evidence
Speaker 1: of anything approaching a criminal assault.
Speaker 3: Mister Guy leans across from as Deeming staff member and
Speaker 3: puts his arm around the MP's neck. She says it
Speaker 3: was a vice like grip. Just minutes before, mister Guy
Speaker 3: posted these photos of the two politicians seemingly happy together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is the grassy old footage of Victorian politics.
Speaker 1: I think we've all watched it on slow mo four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times to work out exactly what's going on.
Speaker 1: So Moira Deeming and Matthew Guy were at a community function,
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that MPs find themselves at multiple
Speaker 1: nights of every week.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there were people dancing.
Speaker 1: There was obviously a lot of noise going on at
Speaker 1: this party, and Matthew Guy you can see in the video,
Speaker 1: leans over to say something to Moi redeeming. She subsequently
Speaker 1: accused him of putting her in a headlock. How did
Speaker 1: that allegation actually emerge?
Speaker 4: She went to Jess Wilson, the leader's office, and people
Speaker 4: in the party to make that complaint. At a certain point,
Speaker 4: the advice was given to her by State President Brian
Speaker 4: Locknane that what you're alleging is essentially a physical assault
Speaker 4: under criminal law and she needed to potentially go to
Speaker 4: the police. It wasn't necessarily something that the party could
Speaker 4: work out or investigate itself.
Speaker 5: She did that.
Speaker 4: Police investigated for a number of weeks, including sourcing that
Speaker 4: CCTV that we've all i think at this point seen,
Speaker 4: and police concluded there was no offense. So this could
Speaker 4: have all been over, and Moira could have kept her
Speaker 4: position heading into the election if she had apologized. Matthew
Speaker 4: Guy demanded an apology, as did Jess Wilson. She refused
Speaker 4: to apologize for that, saying she made the complaint or
Speaker 4: allegation in good faith. It's become kind of unclear as
Speaker 4: this saga has gone on, does she still.
Speaker 5: Stand by the allegation or not.
Speaker 4: I can't actually tell you that based on the array
Speaker 4: of statement she's released in recent days and weeks and
Speaker 4: even today, it's still unclear whether she actually stands by it.
Speaker 1: Deeming this week put a proposal to the party that
Speaker 1: she and Matthew Guy, the man she accused of assault,
Speaker 1: could put out a statement agreeing that she made the
Speaker 1: initial complaint in good faith.
Speaker 2: Matthew Guy wasn't keen.
Speaker 1: It was a pretty shocking allegation, and Matthew Guy was outraged.
Speaker 1: He was emanating rage in his public pronouncements on this
Speaker 1: anthony and absolutely denied having done anything wrong.
Speaker 6: My family, name, my reputation is not a political toy.
Speaker 6: No one's is, and so I want and my family
Speaker 6: deserve those apologies, particularly from MOI.
Speaker 1: Redeeming the footage is grainy but it seems to me
Speaker 1: to show him leaning over, touching her on the back
Speaker 1: and speaking to her, and then leaning back to talk
Speaker 1: to someone else, and then the pair of them getting
Speaker 1: on with their evening. How could there have been such
Speaker 1: very different versions of events from that evening.
Speaker 4: Well, Mara Demi has spoken about how she is a
Speaker 4: victim of child sexual abuse and that certain actions by
Speaker 4: men can be interpreted in a way by her that
Speaker 4: may be different to the average person. I mean, as
Speaker 4: best I can describe, that may be a reason why
Speaker 4: she interpreted such an action in a way that all
Speaker 4: of ours, us looking at that footage, can't really come
Speaker 4: to that same conclusion. Her colleagues aren't kind of accusing
Speaker 4: her maliciously, kind of making this up to damage guy.
Speaker 4: They kind of accept that the complaint was genuinely made.
Speaker 4: But the point is to an MP, they kind of
Speaker 4: look at that footage and they say, once looking at
Speaker 4: that footage, she should have apologized.
Speaker 1: I mean, if the footage didn't exist, and she says
Speaker 1: she didn't see it until the allegation made its way
Speaker 1: into the media.
Speaker 2: Another thing that she's annoyed about.
Speaker 1: Matthew Guy would have had to live with this accusation
Speaker 1: and would have had to try to defend himself when
Speaker 1: it would have been extremely difficult. I mean, it's hard
Speaker 1: to fight off this kind of allegation, isn't it. I
Speaker 1: mean he was in a very difficult position.
Speaker 4: If there was no CCTV, or if the allegation was
Speaker 4: about an incident in a private kind of corridor where
Speaker 4: there were no witnesses. You're right, this would hang over Matthew,
Speaker 4: you guys head forever. I mean, he may have been
Speaker 4: able to keep his position as a shadow front bencher,
Speaker 4: but it would be he said, she said, scenario where
Speaker 4: he may never in the public's mind and in his
Speaker 4: colleague's mind, I have been able to recover from this.
Speaker 4: So in a way, he was very fortunate. There was
Speaker 4: footage of the incident, which at the very least shows
Speaker 4: no evidence of what Deeming originally alleged with a form
Speaker 4: of headlock.
Speaker 1: Laura Deming's really interesting person. She came into Parliament and
Speaker 1: made a massive splash straight away with a maiden speech
Speaker 1: about women's rights and women's right to have their own spaces,
Speaker 1: kind of inserting herself into a conversation that was already
Speaker 1: pretty hot in Victoria.
Speaker 5: Women and girls are suffering in Victoria because this government
Speaker 5: cannot or will not define what a female is.
Speaker 1: She then got herself entangled into a dispute with former
Speaker 1: Victorian Liberal leader John Persudo.
Speaker 2: What was the sort of essence of that and where
Speaker 2: to end up?
Speaker 5: Yes, so she a bitted let women speak rally.
Speaker 4: She's all about leaving women only spaces through biological women
Speaker 4: and this rally, you know, a topic as you say
Speaker 4: that she was already very passionate about and is kind
Speaker 4: of one of the central reasons why she got into
Speaker 4: politics in the first place. So this was gate crashed
Speaker 4: by far right individuals, including neo Nazis, and John Persudo
Speaker 4: accused deeming of associating with these individuals that gay crashed
Speaker 4: the rally. She sued him after being kicked out of
Speaker 4: the party room. As she was successful in that defamation action.
Speaker 6: I just want to say thank you to everybody who
Speaker 6: stood by with me and yeah, we're just going to
Speaker 6: get out there and continue to get sex base rights
Speaker 6: for women and child safeguards for children.
Speaker 4: So she was really vindicated over that, and through that process,
Speaker 4: I guess, really became a darling of conservatives throughout Australia.
Speaker 4: Really over her stance on that issue. But that's kind
Speaker 4: of one of the reasons why people have turned on
Speaker 4: her because what she's a ledge here is the kind
Speaker 4: of thing that many conservatives around the country, in my estimation,
Speaker 4: would be pretty concerned about a man touching a female
Speaker 4: colleague on the shoulder to whisper something and then being
Speaker 4: alleged to have done something that he didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it goes right to the fears that some men
Speaker 1: have expressed over the past few decades that you can't
Speaker 1: do anything anymore, that you know, interactions with women are
Speaker 1: highly fraught nowadays, and that you might get accused of something.
Speaker 1: We don't often see that actually happening. But this really
Speaker 1: crystallized I think that other big cultural moment that we've had.
Speaker 1: How much has it damaged more redeeming standing within the
Speaker 1: party itself. Even though, as you say, you know her
Speaker 1: colleagues are not openly saying that they think that she
Speaker 1: made this up maliciously immensely.
Speaker 4: I mean, a lot of her fans are kind of
Speaker 4: blokes over the age of forty who, as you say,
Speaker 4: concerned about this. We like to think these kinds of
Speaker 4: allegations are never made falsely. You always want to believe
Speaker 4: the victim. So a lot of her kind of fans
Speaker 4: throughout the country, she couldn't have picked the worst issue,
Speaker 4: I think, to kind of alienate them. Over in terms
Speaker 4: of her stance on biological women, she's argued that objective reality,
Speaker 4: biologies all that counts. That just because someone feels they're
Speaker 4: a woman, it doesn't make them so. So you know,
Speaker 4: essentially facts matter. But then on this she is in
Speaker 4: a way arguing her subjective experience, perhaps her past trauma,
Speaker 4: you know, matters more than the objective evidence that we
Speaker 4: can all see on the footage.
Speaker 1: You can see why she's so appealing to those voters.
Speaker 1: You talk about Anthony like she's kind of the classic outsider.
Speaker 1: You know, she's a former school teacher. I think she
Speaker 1: speaks very frankly. She's prepared to go there on issues
Speaker 1: that other politicians find themselves a bit trapped by. Like
Speaker 1: we've seen a generation of politicians unable or unwilling to
Speaker 1: even define what a woman is. You know, she's got
Speaker 1: that kind of paul En hands and ask ability to
Speaker 1: just cut to the chase.
Speaker 2: And speak very frankly.
Speaker 1: It's almost a disarming kind of frankness that she has
Speaker 1: Does that mean that she's kind of not equipped for
Speaker 1: modern politics or is that how she's kind of got
Speaker 1: herself into this situation?
Speaker 2: Do you think?
Speaker 5: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: I would have says that it's more a contradiction of
Speaker 4: everything she stood for. You know, as you say, she's
Speaker 4: a clear communicator, she argues that facts matter, plain language
Speaker 4: is important, and then on this matter she's bringing in.
Speaker 5: All kinds of terms.
Speaker 4: One of the more kind of bizarre elements in recent
Speaker 4: days is she's sought evidence from a martial arts expert
Speaker 4: about this being, as I understand it, some kind of
Speaker 4: mma neck grip that Matthew Guy was doing. I think
Speaker 4: for many people that believe that plain language matters and
Speaker 4: there is an objective reality, what Moira alleged here kind
Speaker 4: of runs counter to a lot of that, and these
Speaker 4: contradictory to where she's had positions on in the past.
Speaker 1: Coming up, so will deeming day in Parliament on someone
Speaker 1: else's ticket, A high profile MP who's developing a reputation
Speaker 1: for sort of speaking truth to power and saying unsayable
Speaker 1: things is a bit of a nightmare for any political
Speaker 1: party leader. It was really hard for John Persuto to
Speaker 1: know how to deal with this. In fact, it all
Speaker 1: blew up in his face when he lost the defamation
Speaker 1: action that they were involved in. How is Jess Hill
Speaker 1: handling this?
Speaker 4: She wants her gone from the party room over her
Speaker 4: refusal to apologize to Matthew Guy, who's a front bencher
Speaker 4: going to be a minister if she wins the election
Speaker 4: in November.
Speaker 5: I mean, every MP I've spoken to a person is.
Speaker 4: Of that view that it's kind of untenable to make
Speaker 4: an allegation such as this, to go to the police
Speaker 4: and make a criminal complaint and then when it's found
Speaker 4: that there's no evidence of what you're alleging, to not
Speaker 4: apologize to an MP, they kind of all want to
Speaker 4: go on. And Jess Wilson's of that view as well.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons some conservatives liked Murraw Deeming is
Speaker 1: that she kind of seemed like the hope of the side.
Speaker 1: You know, the Victorian Liberals have been pretty moribund for
Speaker 1: a while now. They don't seem to be able to
Speaker 1: make much of a dent in labor, despite Labour's manifest
Speaker 1: failings in Victoria over the years. If this is the
Speaker 1: end of the Deeming kind of chapter in the Victorian
Speaker 1: Liberals history. Where does that leave the party in relation
Speaker 1: to that November election.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 4: I mean, she was no doubt an asset, especially among
Speaker 4: the Bays where people always questioned her utility was it's undeniable.
Speaker 4: She has lots of fans throughout the country, lots of
Speaker 4: Conservative fans, but she represents the western metropolitan region of
Speaker 4: Melbourne in the Upper House and that's a part of
Speaker 4: Melbourne the Liberals really don't have a big footprint in.
Speaker 4: They don't have many Lower House seats, if at all
Speaker 4: any and did she talk enough about the West of
Speaker 4: Melbourne and the lack of infrastructure and services that the
Speaker 4: Andrews Allen governments have kind of neglected that area of Melbourne.
Speaker 4: She was started after a pre selection drama earlier this
Speaker 4: year where she lost the pre selection and then her
Speaker 4: opponent was disendorsed, so she got it back. She did
Speaker 4: start to kind of really focus on Western Melbourne issues
Speaker 4: and it seemed like she had really got on board
Speaker 4: with the effort to win the election in November. So
Speaker 4: this kind of really came out of the blue, but
Speaker 4: kind of confirmed for a lot of people. Or is
Speaker 4: she more interested in fighting her colleagues than trying to
Speaker 4: beat labor. I guess the criticism in a nutshal ofvre
Speaker 4: is did she ever layer glove on labor? Did she
Speaker 4: ever really make life difficult for this labor government or
Speaker 4: did she only ever make life difficult for her liberal colleagues.
Speaker 2: Is there a risk now?
Speaker 1: Is there a downside risk for the Liberals now that
Speaker 1: she goes to one nation or that she becomes successful independent.
Speaker 4: Well not to one nation, because Pauline Hansen has said
Speaker 4: she doesn't want her over her allegation and refusal to apologize,
Speaker 4: So that really probably let the Liberal Party off the hook.
Speaker 4: When they heard that, they thought, oh, well, at least
Speaker 4: she's not going to make life difficult for us in
Speaker 4: my nation. You know, everyone thinks my nation's going to
Speaker 4: win some seats and it's going to be a real
Speaker 4: player at the election, So that's really helped. She could
Speaker 4: join another minority party, or she could run as an independent,
Speaker 4: but I think that rejection from Hanson will kind of
Speaker 4: be decisive. But you know, she's got a number of
Speaker 4: months left in Parliament until the election. She could say
Speaker 4: all kinds of things under parliamentary privilege, make all kinds
Speaker 4: of allegations if she wanted to do.
Speaker 5: I'm not accusing her of planning that.
Speaker 4: I have no line of sight on that, but those
Speaker 4: are the kinds of things that you know, when you've
Speaker 4: got a very cranky member that you've disendorsed, could do
Speaker 4: in their final months Parliament.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sure the journals will be hoping she yields many,
Speaker 1: many more stories before she leaves politics.
Speaker 2: Anthony.
Speaker 1: If she ever does so, I'm sure it won't be
Speaker 1: the last time we speak about Moray Deeming.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Anthony Galloway is The Australian's Victorian political editor. You can
Speaker 1: check out all his scoops anytime at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot au