Back in March last year, I wrote a post on the Liberal Party’s Moira Problem, ie the problem that the Liberal Party had in dealing with the newly elected The Honourable Moira Deeming MLC after her participation in a rather chaotic gender identity rally which was gate crashed by neo-Nazi morons.
I mostly restricted my observations at that time to the damage that her election had done to the Liberal Party grassroots in the Western Metropolitan Province in Melbourne, and the concerns that had been expressed to me about her.
Her willingness to use the bully pulpit of her newly won seat in the Victorian Parliament to engage in a one woman crusade on gender identity issues was pretty obvious before she elected – which is what caused more conciliatory heads in Liberal Party circles to have serious concerns about her candidacy.
I was rather concerned that a big mistake had been made – I have never been a fan of her predecessor Bernie Finn, who shared some similarly socially conservative views, and whom I used to delight in ridiculing in this blog.
Hey, I am an extremely personally conservative chap – I subscribe to Newsweekly after all (although I have not bothered buying the book Pat Byrne Esq has written on gender issues which is regularly advertised in its pages). I don’t necessarily disagree with most of her concerns about gender identity issues. But I do not really see any of this stuff as a hill to die on.
The current State Labor Government is what we need to focus on, not whether the highly woke author JK Rowlings is not woke enough for contemporary progressives (to interpret Moira Deemings’ personal hobby horse in a simplified way).
The Andrews-Allen Labor Government has probably been the worst government in Victorian history since the government of the aptly named Sir Thomas Bent, over a century ago. The excesses of abuse of authority during the pandemic were unforgivable, and illustrated Labor’s principles taken to their logical technocratic extremes. Then there was the debacle with the 2026 Commonwealth Games, which does look very much in retrospect like an extremely cynical exercise in buying votes in marginal regional seats at the last state election with a rubber cheque.
Most people will not appreciate that the state government apparatus, ie the Victorian Public Service, has been excessively politicised and converted into a tool aimed at ensuring the reelection and continued rule of the Labor government. This is a matter which belies the claim that we live in a democracy.
Of course, we can never overlook the $188 Billion current state debt – that is about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in Victoria – which has been incurred in infrastructure projects, some of which are of dubious merit. How do we ever pay that debt out? [Rhetorical question – I will address this in a later blog post sometime.]
So I consider that there are enough serious problems with the current government which merit it finally being flushed down the toilet like so many turds in November 2026.
So… Moira deciding to become a cultural warrior was, in my opinion, a misguided action, something more in line with her personal agendas, rather than in the broader interest of the Liberal Party or even that of the Victorian people (who really need to get rid of this awful government).
It has become, in the intervening 21 months, a major distraction to the proper work of the State Opposition. The whole expulsion debacle, with the ensuing lawsuit, has diverted both attention and energy which the State Opposition should have devoted to constructively criticising the poor governance being imposed on our state by Chairman Dan and his chosen successor, Jacinta Allen.
Now, the tragicomedy is about to come to its penultimate act. Moira has won $300,000 in her defamation case against the Opposition Leader, John Pesutto, and is about to get reinstated in the Liberal Party room. There is a leadership spill that has been called, and it looks like Pesutto will lose the leadership.
I believe that Pesutto losing the leadership is going to be a sad mistake for the state Liberals. He is a decent fellow who has a consensus building and conciliatory approach to leadership. The expulsion of Moira from the party room was not his sole decision – it required a majority vote of her peers, and was decided after those peers lost patience with her inability to perform as part of a team. I have serious doubts as to whether anyone else currently in the state parliament has the ability to unite the Liberals and lead the coalition to victory at the next state election.
And that will be the final act in this tragicomedy – the November 2026, which I fear the Coalition will lose as the result of this turbulent upper house MP.
Lost For Words! 