Credlin exposes Libs’ shabby treatment of Deeming

Peta Credlin’s critique of the Liberals at the half-way mark of the Deeming versus Pesutto defamation trial is damning.

In her column in The Australian this week, Credlin decries the Liberal Party’s treatment of expelled Victorian Upper House MLA Moira Deeming, painting a grim picture of a party betraying its conservative roots.

Credlin, a long-standing Liberal and former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, highlights the gutless actions of Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto, accusing him of sacrificing a strong conservative woman for his own political survival.

Deeming’s real “crime,” according to Credlin, was not her attendance at a rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis, but the fact that she was a conservative with courage. Pesutto’s decision to expel Deeming from the party was never about the rally, but rather about purging the parliamentary party of a strong conservative voice.

Pesutto, fearing backlash in his own teal-leaning electorate, opted to smear Deeming as a neo-Nazi sympathizer.

Credlin underscores that Pesutto’s failure to support Deeming was a classic case of gutlessness—allowing his political opponents to dictate his actions.

Instead of defending Deeming’s right to free speech and supporting her stance on biological males invading women’s spaces, Pesutto threw her under the bus.

In court, Pesutto even admitted Deeming was not a neo-Nazi or sympathizer, but still, he forced her out for standing up for women’s rights.

This saga, now unfolding in a costly and drawn-out defamation case, reflects not just Pesutto’s failings but the broader decay of the Victorian Liberal Party.

As Credlin notes, the Liberals should be capitalising on the weak and fractured Andrews government, but instead, they are embroiled in internal divisions, too scared to stand for anything conservative.

Pesutto’s obsession with appeasing the left has only further alienated the party’s conservative base.

The result is a demoralised Liberal Party, disconnected from its own supporters, and no closer to electoral success.

For conservatives like Credlin, Moira Deeming’s treatment exemplifies everything wrong with the modern Victorian Liberals—a party too paralysed by fear to fight for its core values.

This is a stark warning to all conservatives: if outspoken figures like Deeming are forced out, what future does the Liberal Party offer for conservative Australians?

Family First stands firm in supporting strong conservative women like Moira Deeming, and we won’t shy away from defending those who speak up for the rights of women and stand against radical ideologies.

Lyle Shelton is National Director of the Family First Party. He started his career as a rural journalist before being elected as a member of the Toowoomba City Council and serving the Australian Christian Lobby for 10 years, half of that decade as ACL's Managing Director. He was a Director and spokesman for the Coalition for Marriage during the 2017 postal survey campaign which resulted in the legal undefinition of marriage. He also blogs here.