Victorian politics feels like a bad reality TV show that just won't get canceled. Just when you think the state opposition might actually focus on winning an election, they trip over their own feet and fall into another legal dumpster fire.
The latest episode happened in a Melbourne courtroom. Moira Deeming, the controversial upper house MP, managed to pull off another eleventh hour escape. She filed a last-gasp Supreme Court challenge to stop her own party from kicking her out. Her targets were Victorian Liberal Party president Brian Loughnane and the party state executive. They were supposed to meet at 6:30 PM on Friday to pull her endorsement. Instead, the party had to back down in front of a judge.
Marcus Clarke KC, representing the party, stood up and gave a formal undertaking. The Liberals promised not to take any steps to disendorse Deeming until the court makes a final ruling. Justice Kerri Judd penciled in a swift one-day trial for July 17.
Deeming gets to survive as a Liberal candidate for at least another fortnight. The party gets another two weeks of humiliating front-page headlines. Nobody actually wins here. It is just a slow, painful bleeding out of political capital less than five months before Victorians head to the ballot box on November 28.
The Fake Headlock and the Investigation That Went Nowhere
To understand how we got to this courtroom showdown, you have to look at the bizarre allegation that started this specific fight. This isn't about Deeming's past controversies or her infamous rallies. This is about an incident at a gala dinner on May 23.
Deeming claimed that former Liberal leader Matthew Guy assaulted her. She explicitly accused him of grabbing her violently in a headlock. It was a massive allegation. If true, it should have ended Guy's career permanently.
Victoria Police launched an investigation. They looked at the CCTV footage from the venue. What did the cameras show? They showed Matthew Guy sitting at a table, chatting with Deeming and another man. Guy reached out, put his hand on Deeming's upper back or shoulder area, and pulled her in slightly to tell her something. Then he did the exact same thing to the man sitting next to them.
The police looked at the tapes and shut the file down fast. Their official conclusion was simple. There was no offence detected.
Deeming's lawyers tried to spin it later. They argued that Guy kept his grip while Deeming tried to pull away, making the physical contact unexpected, painful, and frightening. Deeming herself later claimed she just misunderstood what the word headlock actually meant.
Think about that for a second. An elected lawmaker made a public police complaint about a violent assault, only to later say she didn't know what a headlock was. Yet she still refused to apologize to Matthew Guy.
Guy was furious, and rightly so. His reputation took a public beating based on an accusation that the police dismissed almost immediately. He demanded a public apology. He hasn't received one.
Jess Wilson and the Nightmare of an Unwinnable Election
This brings us to the freshly minted Liberal leader, Jess Wilson. She took the reins after John Pesutto's leadership collapsed, largely because Pesutto got dragged through a brutal, expensive defamation lawsuit brought by Deeming. You would think the party would have learned its lesson about how Deeming uses the legal system.
Wilson has tried to play the strong leader. She publicly backed Matthew Guy and stated his reputation had been severely harmed. She went to Deeming directly and told her to apologize. Deeming dug her heels in.
So Wilson and Brian Loughnane decided it was time to drop the hammer. They called the Friday night state executive meeting to disendorse her. It was supposed to be a clean surgical strike to rid the party of a constant distraction.
Instead, they walked right into a ambush. Deeming's barrister, Ganesh Jegatheesan, filed for an emergency injunction on Friday morning. The party was forced to give an undertaking to avoid an immediate, messy injunction ruling from Justice Judd.
This leaves Jess Wilson in a terrible position. A recent RedBridge poll showed that the Labor Premier, Jacinta Allan, is deeply unpopular with Victorian voters right now. Labor has been battered by scandals surrounding Union infiltration in the Big Build infrastructure projects and massive cost blowouts. Under normal circumstances, an opposition party should be coasting toward government.
But that same poll showed that nearly 20% of the 5,000 people surveyed didn't even know who Jess Wilson was. She is an unknown quantity to a huge slice of the electorate. It is impossible to build a public profile or sell a vision for Victoria when your evening news slots are entirely consumed by Moira Deeming's legal maneuvers.
Political scientist Zareh Ghazarian summed it up perfectly. This is the most critical moment for the Liberal leadership to clear out their internal rot. The infighting has hobbled the party significantly. Every day spent talking about court undertakings is a day lost talking to ordinary voters who are struggling with rent, electricity bills, and a failing healthcare system.
Why the Court Undertaking Changes Absolutely Nothing
Let's look closely at what actually happened in the Supreme Court. The Liberal Party didn't lose the lawsuit on Friday, but they certainly didn't win.
Justice Kerri Judd made it clear that she wasn't there to review the police decision regarding Matthew Guy. That matter is dead. The court case on July 17 will focus on a narrow scope. It will look at whether the Liberal Party's internal rules and processes allow them to disendorse an MP under these specific circumstances, or if Deeming's contractual rights as a member are being breached.
When Marcus Clarke KC gave the undertaking not to disendorse Deeming until the July 17 hearing, he was saving the party from an immediate injunction defeat. Justice Judd noted that accepting the undertaking didn't mean the Friday night meeting couldn't happen at all. It just meant the meeting couldn't result in her actual expulsion or disendorsement before the trial. The party leadership realized a meeting without the power to act was pointless, so they adjourned the whole thing.
This means we are stuck in a holding pattern. Deeming's lawyer, Tim Houweling, maintains that his client's police complaint was made honestly and in good faith. Deeming believes she is the victim of a factional hit job. The party believes she is an unguided missile destroying their chances at the November election.
Even if the party wins the court battle on July 17 and successfully dumps her, the damage is already done. July is halfway gone by then. The election is in November. You can't build a cohesive, disciplined campaign strategy when you are purging candidates in late winter.
The Broken Strategy of Fighting Your Own Team
The true tragedy of the Victorian Liberal Party is their total inability to manage internal dissent. Political parties are supposed to be broad churches, but this church has turned into a gladiatorial arena.
Look at how other right-wing figures are reacting. Pauline Hanson recently went on 3AW radio and explicitly stated that One Nation would not offer Deeming a spot on their ticket if she gets expelled. Hanson argued that Deeming's refusal to apologize to Guy showed an inability to admit when she got it wrong. When Pauline Hanson thinks you are too radioactive and divisive to join her party, you know you have crossed a line.
Deeming seems convinced that she can sue her way into political relevance. She won her defamation case against John Pesutto, which essentially decapitated the previous Liberal leadership team. Now she is using the Supreme Court to paralyze the current leadership under Jess Wilson and Brian Loughnane.
It is a scorched-earth strategy. If Deeming loses her endorsement, she leaves behind a ruined party. If she wins the court case and forces the party to keep her, she stays inside a room full of colleagues who deeply resent her presence and refuse to work with her. There is no scenario where this ends with a happy, united Liberal team standing on a stage celebrating an election victory in late November.
The voters of Victoria are watching this circus with a mix of exhaustion and contempt. They are being offered a choice between a Labor government mired in union scandals and an opposition that acts like a collection of bickering law students.
The next step isn't political, it's entirely legal. Both sides will spend the next two weeks prepping affidavits and spending thousands of dollars of donor money on high-priced KCs. Mark July 17 on your calendar. That is the day the Victorian Liberal Party either finds a way to cut the cord, or officially surrenders the 2026 election.
