Ms Deeming, a former Liberal MP who now sits as an independent, is suing Mr Pesutto for defamation over allegations he falsely portrayed her as a Nazi sympathiser after she spoke at a rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
The furore erupted after Ms Deeming spoke at the Let Women Speak rally in Melbourne, which she maintains was organised to help raise awareness about the harmful impact of allowing biological males who say they’re women to self-identify into female-only spaces, services and sports.
Critics claimed the rallies were anti-trans. In the wake of the rally’s fallout, Ms Deeming, who some suggest could be a future Liberal leader, was exiled from the party.
“Very obviously, I’m not a Nazi. And I don’t support Nazis. They arrived just in black as far as I could tell, they were to the Left … everyone thought they were the other people who had got through the lines,” Ms Deeming says on the March 2023 recording.
“You’re not going to find a single shred of evidence … obviously I’m not a mind reader, maybe there’s some secret Nazi somewhere.
“There’s no evidence against me. They just turned up. There’s footage to show that we didn’t even look at them. There’s no photos of us talking to them,” she said.
“I was thinking, ‘oh my gosh, there are Nazis here, that’s terrible, but at least the police are taking them away’. That’s it. How was I supposed to know they were Nazis?
“I don’t know why I would be blamed for some random horrible people showing up.”