Latest news with #CormackFoundation
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Liberals brace for impact as Cyclone Moira makes landfall
Barring a last-minute change of heart from the people controlling the finances of the Victorian Liberal Party or the Cormack Foundation, an investment fund established for the party's benefit, its destructive forces will be unleashed on Deeming's party room colleagues, her leader Brad Battin, and the party she was elected to represent. Deeming, like any successful litigant, is entitled to recover legal costs owed to her. But if we step out of the courtroom and return to our essential wisdom in politics, this is not a course of action a parliamentarian would normally take. Imagine you are a state MP. If a lawyer, in this case defamation lawyers Patrick George and Rebekah Giles, suggested a way to recover costs that would plunge your party into crisis, force an unwanted byelection and remove any reasonable prospect of forming government after the next state election, would you agree to do it? The difference with Deeming is that she no longer considers the people who make up the parliamentary ranks of the Victorian Liberal Party her party, if indeed she ever did. She said as much last week during a podcast with Club Grubbery, an obscure media site run by a paramedic sacked for refusing the jab and a former Qantas pilot turned anti-lockdown campaigner. Over an hour-long discussion, she talked as a guerilla fighter might about the need to seize control of the Liberal Party and its direction. 'I am not satisfied with the government in this country flipping from Liberal to Labor when neither of them represents anything that I can see as good,' she remarked. Loading Deeming's ultimate mission is not to return the Victorian Liberal Party, in its current form, to government. It is to remake it in her ideological image. In this world, parliamentary colleagues who hold to the traditional values of the party are enemies rather than allies. 'If they succeed in getting me out of here it is not as though the Moira Deeming problem will disappear,' she said. What then, should Liberal leader Brad Battin do about the Moira Deeming problem? There is no shortage of advice. Some colleagues want him to bend the knee to Charles Goode, an octogenarian stockbroker who, as Cormack Foundation chairman, sits Smaug-like on its $110 million corpus, and plead for the foundation to cover Pesutto's costs. Others say the money should come from the party itself, given Pesutto was sued for things he said while leading it. Battin's instinct is to do nothing. Earlier this week, one of his MPs, Brad Rowswell, requested a party room meeting to discuss Pesutto's impending bankruptcy and the prospects of a byelection in Hawthorn. Battin made it clear that he wanted to keep talking about machete bans and cuts to stamp duty – not an internal party dispute. This was before news broke in Wednesday's The Australian about Deeming's legal gambit to make former premiers Jeff Kennett, Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine and Liberal colleagues Georgie Crozier and David Southwick pay for Pesutto's sins. A Federal Court will ultimately decide whether this is a Hail Mary by Deeming's lawyers or a new hell for a party that has lost six of the past seven Victorian state elections.
The Age
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
Liberals brace for impact as Cyclone Moira makes landfall
Barring a last-minute change of heart from the people controlling the finances of the Victorian Liberal Party or the Cormack Foundation, an investment fund established for the party's benefit, its destructive forces will be unleashed on Deeming's party room colleagues, her leader Brad Battin, and the party she was elected to represent. Deeming, like any successful litigant, is entitled to recover legal costs owed to her. But if we step out of the courtroom and return to our essential wisdom in politics, this is not a course of action a parliamentarian would normally take. Imagine you are a state MP. If a lawyer, in this case defamation lawyers Patrick George and Rebekah Giles, suggested a way to recover costs that would plunge your party into crisis, force an unwanted byelection and remove any reasonable prospect of forming government after the next state election, would you agree to do it? The difference with Deeming is that she no longer considers the people who make up the parliamentary ranks of the Victorian Liberal Party her party, if indeed she ever did. She said as much last week during a podcast with Club Grubbery, an obscure media site run by a paramedic sacked for refusing the jab and a former Qantas pilot turned anti-lockdown campaigner. Over an hour-long discussion, she talked as a guerilla fighter might about the need to seize control of the Liberal Party and its direction. 'I am not satisfied with the government in this country flipping from Liberal to Labor when neither of them represents anything that I can see as good,' she remarked. Loading Deeming's ultimate mission is not to return the Victorian Liberal Party, in its current form, to government. It is to remake it in her ideological image. In this world, parliamentary colleagues who hold to the traditional values of the party are enemies rather than allies. 'If they succeed in getting me out of here it is not as though the Moira Deeming problem will disappear,' she said. What then, should Liberal leader Brad Battin do about the Moira Deeming problem? There is no shortage of advice. Some colleagues want him to bend the knee to Charles Goode, an octogenarian stockbroker who, as Cormack Foundation chairman, sits Smaug-like on its $110 million corpus, and plead for the foundation to cover Pesutto's costs. Others say the money should come from the party itself, given Pesutto was sued for things he said while leading it. Battin's instinct is to do nothing. Earlier this week, one of his MPs, Brad Rowswell, requested a party room meeting to discuss Pesutto's impending bankruptcy and the prospects of a byelection in Hawthorn. Battin made it clear that he wanted to keep talking about machete bans and cuts to stamp duty – not an internal party dispute. This was before news broke in Wednesday's The Australian about Deeming's legal gambit to make former premiers Jeff Kennett, Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine and Liberal colleagues Georgie Crozier and David Southwick pay for Pesutto's sins. A Federal Court will ultimately decide whether this is a Hail Mary by Deeming's lawyers or a new hell for a party that has lost six of the past seven Victorian state elections.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Victorian Liberals prepare last-minute bid to bail out John Pesutto with loan to help pay $2.3m defamation costs
Victorian Liberal party officials are preparing a last minute proposal for the state division to loan former leader John Pesutto enough money to pay the $2.3m in legal costs he owes to Moira Deeming. The proposal, according to multiple Liberal sources, will need to be presented to the party's 19-member administrative wing in order to be approved. But so far, no meeting has been called to discuss the loan and its terms, which have not been finalised. The loan may be partly funded by the Cormack Foundation, the state party's multimillion-dollar investment vehicle, which has so far been reluctant to support Pesutto as it is not allowed to provide financial assistance to individuals. The proposal is expected to be discussed by senior members of the administrative wing at a regular meeting on Wednesday evening, according to one Liberal source, who expected this discussion would then lead to a broader meeting of all 19 members. Earlier this month, Pesutto was ordered to pay $2.3m of Deeming's legal costs after it was found he repeatedly defamed Deeming by falsely implying she sympathised with neo-Nazis and white supremacists in December. Sources close to Pesutto say the former opposition leader has so far raised roughly one-third of the costs order. Pesutto has already paid Deeming $300,000 in damages plus $15,000 in interest. The former Liberal leader's supporters have been privately lobbying donors for money and trying to raise cash through a GoFundMe page. So far, that page has generated $185,000. They remain hopeful a loan from the party may not be necessary. Deeming has flagged she intends to serve a bankruptcy notice on Friday if her costs remain outstanding, leaving Pesutto a further three weeks to pay. If he misses that deadline, Deeming's solicitor, Patrick George, has indicated they will seek to recover costs from third parties - and will apply for subpoenas to compel Pesutto to disclose communications with his donors. A letter from George seen by Guardian Australia indicates they would seek to recoup costs from former Liberal premiers Ted Baillieu, Denis Napthine and Jeff Kennett. The letter also mentions Charles Gillies, the former chair of the Liberal Party's fundraising arm Enterprise Victoria, Liberal MPs David Southwick and Georgie Crozier, former MP Margaret Fitzherbert, developer Jason Yeap and Pesutto's former staffer Xavier Boffa. 'We request that Mr Pesutto retain, and confirm he has retained, all records relating to these donations including, without being exhaustive, the agreement of these persons to donate to or fund his defence of the proceedings,' the letter said. The letter requested Pesutto retain 'all records relating to the information he provided to them about the proceedings'. Opposition leader, Brad Battin, faced increased pressure on Wednesday to publicly intervene to resolve the saga. 'Every conversation I have with Cormack or the party will remain confidential,' Battin said. He insisted the party room was united but urged MPs to 'stick on message'. Kennett, who is named in the letter and is a key supporter of Pesutto, told the ABC he was not concerned about it, but he reflected on the damage the saga was doing to the state division. 'I can't imagine what it's like to be in that party room. It is a cesspool,'' he told the ABC.
