From Macau: The Victorian Liberals have done it again, only this time the farce has played out in under 24 hours.
On Sunday, Liberal Party delegates in Melbourne’s west voted to dump sitting Upper House MP Moira Deeming from the top spot on preselection ticket. As Deeming did not run for any other spot, this means she would lose her seat at the state election later in the year.
Moderate-backed businessman Dinesh Gourisetty, a prominent figure in Melbourne’s Indian community, beat Deeming comfortably at 39 votes to 26. It was clinical. The moderates got their man. The conservatives got the message.
And then it all fell apart.
By Monday morning, Gourisetty was being called on to retract his preselection and party’s state director reportedly asked him to resign.
The reason?
It has been widely reported today that Gourisetty provided a personal character reference for a convicted child-sex offender.
The bizarre situation has raised questions about the party vetting process.
In my opinion, if this doesn’t prove the Victorian Liberal Party is cooked, nothing will.
This is not a glitch. It is the death rattle of a party that has lost its soul, its judgment, and its reason for existing.
While Labor treats Victoria like it owns the state, crushing families with cost-of-living pain, rising crime, and ideological capture in schools, the opposition chases Teal mirages and ethnic blocs with polite centre-right rhetoric that convinces no one. The policy vacuum is now a black hole. And into that vortex the Liberals have thrown a preselection process so shambolic it makes a mockery of the once-great party in the state where its founder was born. The major parties no longer represent the battlers they claim to serve.
No longer hiding in the wings, One Nation is courting mainstream conservatives, fed-up Labor voters, environmentally frustrated Greens, broke Gen Z-ers, and even disillusioned Teals.
Polling shows it neck-and-neck with the Coalition in the very seats that matter. In Victoria, where the Liberals have spent years purging anyone who sounds remotely like the working families in the outer suburbs, One Nation is the only outfit speaking their language.
Deeming belongs there. She always did.
Her crime was never scandal, it was conviction. In her own words a former ‘Labor Party Princess’, Deeming crossed the floor on principle, entering Parliament quoting Sir Robert Menzies and promising to fight for the people the modern Liberal Party has abandoned.
Deeming defended women’s rights at the Let Women Speak rally in 2023. When neo-Nazis (complete with shaven legs) gate-crashed an event she had nothing to do with, the party room panicked. John Pesutto tried to expel her. Deeming fought back with a defamation suit that laid bare the Liberals’ institutional cowardice.
Nine months suspended, endless internal bleeding, and still the moderates couldn’t let it go. They finished the job just months before the state election, only to watch their replacement implode in barely a news cycle.
The excuse is always ‘electability’. Deeming’s foes point to the rally, the headlines, the risk.
But the real problem was never optics. It was principle. It looked like the Liberal Party decided defending biological reality, women’s single-sex spaces, and free speech was too dangerous. One Nation decided it was non-negotiable.
Deeming chose the side of conviction. Others chose the side of the focus group, and then couldn’t even vet its own candidate.
Western Metropolitan, the Victorian electoral division, is tailor-made for One Nation. Working families crushed by energy prices. Migrants who came for opportunity, not ideology. Women who want their daughters to inherit the same rights they fought for.
Deeming knows these voters. She speaks their language. She has the courage the Liberals lack.
One Nation has already extended the olive branch, more than once. Pauline Hanson has made clear that principled conservatives are welcome. The party has professionalised, broadened its appeal without selling its soul, and stands against the Uniparty consensus on immigration, energy, free speech, and the culture wars. Deeming would not be a token recruit. She would be a star.
The Victorian Liberals’ preselection vote, and its immediate collapse, was not just about numbers. It was a declaration that the backroom pundits would rather lose with moderates than win with conservatives. The same pundits that backed Pesutto through the Deeming saga, that installed Sussan Ley federally over stronger options, think swapping leaders or candidates fixes a rotting brand.
The wheels fell off years ago. Now they have dumped the spare tyre and watched it roll into a ditch.
Deeming has options. The Libertarians have courted her. Independents will whisper. But One Nation is the only vehicle with the numbers, the momentum, and the platform to make her voice count at the state level. Joining them would not be defeat. It would be the smartest strategic move of her political life.
Deeming moving to One Nation would force her opponents to confront the fact the Liberals have become a party of closet inner-city Teals, not the aspirational working families of the suburbs. And it would give Victoria something it desperately needs, a real opposition that fights for the things that actually matter.
There is no party left to support Moira Deeming. I can’t see how she can succeed now the rot has reached the Liberals’ core. The moderates have exposed their own incompetence in record time.
The Victorian Liberal Party is not just broken, it is finished as a serious vehicle for the values Deeming represents.
The Liberals have been constantly placing a bet each way.
Moira Deeming never did.
It is time for her to take the fight to where it can actually be won.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.
