I sincerely hope that Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto has had a good hard look at himself. His attitude toward women’s sex-based rights has been exposed and found wanting.
His atrocious comments about the Let Women Speak event being associated with Neo-Nazi’s have now landed him in hot water with defamation notices being issued by Moira Deeming MP and headliner Kellie-Jay Keen.
Not only has Keen issued Pesutto with the notice, but also his entire Victorian leadership team. They have 28 days to apologise and pay compensation for making “grossly misconceived, wilfully vexatious, and wretchedly false” claims, or face Federal Court action:
In her legal letter sent to the Liberal leader, his deputy David Southwick, upper house leader Georgie Crozier and her deputy Matt Bach on Monday, Ms Keen claims their conduct has seen her become the target of “extreme hate, abuse, harassment, and stalking”, and culminated in her “being physically attacked” and “placed in life threatening danger” at a Let Women Speak rally in New Zealand.
The concerns notice focuses in particular on the motion, signed by all four members of the leadership team, which sought to expel Mrs Deeming from the Liberal Party for attending the march — and was circulated to the Liberal partyroom and to journalists by Mr Pesutto’s office in the days following the event.
Attached to the expulsion motion was a 15-page dossier of social media screenshots and media reports – mostly relating to Ms Keen – which purported to justify the claim that she was associated with “far right-wing extremist groups including neo-Nazi activists.”
Read the article by Kirralie Smith in Binary.