Melbourne

There's obviously a fair bit of nuance (the judgment is 249 pages long) but hopefully these are the important notes.

John Pesutto = current (possibly soon to be former) leader of Victorian opposition/leader of Victorian parliamentary Liberal party

Moira Deeming = member of upper house, now an independent Liberal but used to be part of the Victorian Liberal Party

In March 2023 she helped organise a rally on state parliament steps that most levelheaded folks would describe as anti-trans but ostensibly stated to be "pro-women". It's the same rally that was crashed by literal nazis, you might remember the news from around that time.

Anyway, it's a terrible fucking look for the Liberal party to be sharing the steps of parliament with nazis, even though Deeming did not invite the nazis (she's not actually a nazi, just does share some views about gender/sex with them) and probably barely noticed the nazis were there until the nazis were leaving.

Given it's a terrible look, Pesutto moved to expel her, but eventually the party settled on a suspension. During the motion to expel he made several statements in the form of an internal dossier, media releases and interviews explaining Deeming's position was untenable. During her suspension, Deeming chose to sue Pesutto over these statements. This led to her expulsion and also the current legal process that led to today's judgment.

The judge basically said the words he used in those previously mentioned statements in fact implied or conveyed that Deeming was a nazi associate/sympathiser/tolerator/any of the above, even if he didn't say those things explicitly. There were 5 different publications he was sued over, the judge said they all carried that or a similar imputation.

She was award $300k with more likely for interest or legal costs to be decided soon.

The case was complicated but the complicating matters that stood out to me:

• The matter was handled very poorly as a whole by the Liberal leadership team. Secret recordings, unclear outcomes of meetings, etc.
• Deeming barely understood the optics of the entire situation, and did not step in line with the Liberals, which she really ought to have done to reduce damage to the party. She felt hard done by by not being able to prosecute her views in public when in reality she is generally required as an MP to stick to the party line to improve election chances.
• Speakers at the aforementioned rally have previously been interviewed by or platformed actual white supremacists or nazis and have used nazi symbolism.
• Deeming is genuinely a bigot. She's anti-trans (toilet panicker), anti-abortion (including in cases of rape) and has antivax views.