Moira Deeming loses spot on Victorian Liberal election ballot after preselection standoff against moderate candidate | Victorian politics

Moira Deeming has lost her spot on the ballot for the Victorian Liberal party at the November state election, after a successful challenge by a moderate-backed candidate.

Liberal members gathered at party headquarters in Melbourne’s CBD on Sunday for the western metropolitan region convention, where Deeming lost a challenge from Dinesh Gourisetty, a prominent figure in Melbourne’s fast-growing Indian community.

Deeming was among four sitting conservative upper house MPs whose preselections have been challenged.

Her initial preselection in 2022 created controversy due to her views on issues such as abortion and transgender rights.

Her profile then surged after she was expelled from the Liberal party room in 2023.

The expulsion came after she threatened legal action against the then leader, John Pesutto, for his comments after her involvement in a rally gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Deeming ultimately won the defamation fight, leading to Pesutto losing the leadership in 2024.

She was brought back into the party room by his successor, Brad Battin, and appointed as the “leader’s representative to the western suburbs” – a role that was not continued under the current leader, Jess Wilson.

Despite backing from high-profile conservatives, including the former prime minister Tony Abbott and media commentator Peta Credlin, Liberal sources had maintained for months that Deeming would not be able to stave off the challenge.

Gourisetty was understood to have built strong support across western suburbs branches, while the party’s executive committee was skewing more moderate under the president, Philip Davis.

He told reporters that he was “pretty confident” as he arrived on Sunday.

Wilson, who has said she will vote for every sitting MP in the preselection ballots, had provided Deeming with a reference describing her as an “articulate and effective advocate for our party’s values in a part of Melbourne where people are increasingly interested in voting for change”.

“The Liberal party needs candidates like Moira in Melbourne’s west, which will be such an important battleground for the 2026 state election,” Wilson wrote.

Abbott said the move to oust Deeming was a “death wish”, while Credlin described her as a “rare individual” capable of uniting conservatives, disaffected Labor voters, working-class and migrant communities. “I have never met a more tenacious, more resilient and more fearless person than Moira,” it reads.

During the preselection process, Deeming complained to the party’s executive, alleging irregularities in the delegate selection, including early voting, a lack of ID checks and ineligible members being allowed to vote across several branches. She had called for the ballots to be declared invalid and re-run, but the executive rejected her request.

Four delegates who were expected to vote for Gourisetty were disqualified from voting on Thursday.

There have also been internal discussions about a potential move to One Nation if Deeming loses the preselection contest – although her supporters insist she was not contemplating this. One senior Liberal source claimed her concerns around the branch votes are “laying the groundwork” for a potential defection.

About 70 people were expected to take part in Sunday’s vote, including delegates from the western suburbs branches, a random pool of metropolitan Melbourne members and the executive.

It comes after Bev McArthur, a conservative power broker and the opposition’s leader in the upper house, survived a challenge by the former Geelong mayor Trent Sullivan on Saturday. McArthur will remain on the top spot on the western Victoria ticket with conservative Graham Watt, a former lower house state MP, second.

A source closer to McArthur described the win as a “crushing blow” to Davis’ moderate grouping and a “rebuke of those in the party that underestimated Bev’s popularity and community support”.

McArthur on Sunday said the “grassroots democracy” had “emphatically backed an experienced, united team” and that she looked forward to “helping Jess form and lead a government that restores hope and opportunity to Victoria.”

Last weekend, Renee Heath withstood a challenge for the top spot in eastern Victoria from the journalist and author Sue Smethurst. Ann-Marie Hermans was relegated to second position on the ballot in the south-eastern metropolitan region by Phillip Pease.