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John Pesutto thought clawing his way back into politics was hard after losing his seat at the 2018 state election. But his tumultuous first six months as leader of the Victorian Liberal Party has been a battle of an entirely different kind.
Under his watch, the party’s polling has worsened, and his decision to expel upper house MP Moira Deeming from the party after she attended a rally gatecrashed by neo-Nazis has fractured the already-shaky Victorian Liberal Party.
John Pesutto and wife Betty at their home in Melbourne’s east.Credit: Justin McManus
He was left red-faced last month when dozens of party members booed, yelled “shame” and walked out on the opposition leader as he rose to give a speech at the party’s state council meeting in Bendigo.
Some are again writing off Pesutto’s political career. Colleagues and commentators are predicting his demise.
But in an interview with The Sunday Age to mark his six months in the job, he maintains he made the right decision in his handling of the Deeming saga, the defining issue so far of his stint as opposition leader. And he says he is determined to fight on – something he learnt from his much-loved mother – to remain party leader.
“My mum would always say to us, she still does, that for our family, things are always harder,” Pesutto said. “I have not forgotten that.”
Supporters of Moira Deeming boo and yell “shame” at John Pesutto during the party’s state council.Credit: Penny Stephens
The 52-year-old has replayed the events of the past six months over and over in his head but insists he had to take immediate action against Deeming to protect the party’s name and reputation.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t think about what I have done, in terms of whether I could have done things differently. But I always come back to the conclusion that there is no easy way. You’ve just got to confront it.
“I acted without delay because I was concerned about what would otherwise happen to our standing. I still feel strongly that the party’s name and reputation had to be protected.
“I only wish I had had more time to consult party members more broadly. But I would not have done this if I didn’t believe, deep down, that it was necessary to win.”
Critics say that by expelling Deeming – who supports gender-critical feminists who argue sex is immutable – Pesutto, a moderate, isolated the party’s conservative members, acted without authority and muzzled free speech.
But the father-of-three insists her expulsion wasn’t about “free speech or the ability to have debates” but a matter of “teamwork, discipline and focus”.
He said he accepts that the party needs to discuss difficult issues and that gender debates are “legitimate issues to discuss”.
Pesutto said he wishes he had more time to consult party members about Deeming’s expulsionCredit: Justin McManus
Pesutto has recently begun spending more time talking to party members and selling his revival of the Liberal Party as a more inclusive party that is ready to take office in 2026.
While Pesutto, a lawyer by trade, is optimistic about his future, Liberal MPs – both federal and state – are split on whether he will lead the party to the next election.
In the coming months, he will face defamation action from Deeming and a crucial byelection test in Warrandyte, all while trying to represent an ultra-marginal seat and reform the party he loves.
“I am not going to say it will be easy, there will be difficult days ahead,” Pesutto said.
“Lots of people have been told they can’t win, but you get to decide that,” he said. “You have to build that belief back up.”
Politics is a brutal business. But in those increasingly rare moments of downtime, Pesutto likes to play guitar or binge on his favourite TV series including political satire Veep and Succession (he was happy with the finale but has sympathy for Kendall Roy).
Wife Betty describes the couple's home as their “safe space”.
“The moments we do have together are really precious,” Betty told The Sunday Age.
The couple, who John said get on “like a house on fire”, met through friends in the early 1990s. They married in 2001 after John popped the question on their fourth anniversary, following a romantic dinner at a bayside restaurant.
John Pesutto with his mother Antonietta.
“He actually went into my jewellery box to find my ring size, but chose one of the rings I wear on my middle finger so it turned out to be quite large,” Betty laughs. “But I wanted to wear it for a few days before it could be resized so I put some sticky tape on it.”
Betty is an accountant but has taken on the role of political confidant, advisor and campaigner during her husband’s career. She admits the criticism can be tough but said she shares her husband’s political values and resilience.
Born in the Victorian town of Traralgon in 1970, John was the fourth of five children born to Antonietta and Luigino Pesutto.
Luigino – an orphan – emigrated to Australia in 1961 from his home in Calabria in southern Italy, searching for better opportunities than those in postwar Italy. Antonietta, who didn’t speak English, followed alone two years later on the Galileo Galilei, which docked at Port Melbourne in 1963. The pair married days later.
“My daughters call their Nonna ‘boss lady’ because of how gutsy she was,” Pesutto says.
Luigino had several jobs but spent most of his working life as an electrician at the local power station. Pesutto would proudly wear a T-shirt that read “My dad works at Yallourn W” – the local coal-fired power plant in the Latrobe Valley.
Pesutto's mum raised the couple's five children and worked as a machinist at McArthur's shoe factory in Traralgon.
His admiration for his parents is clear: “You made this happen” he says, reflecting on their sacrifice. But the admiration is mutual. Luigino can regularly be seen walking around his retirement village wearing a “John Pesutto for Hawthorn” T-shirt and used his son’s election posters to scare away birds from his veggie patch.
“The struggle they went through, the chances they took, were amazing by today’s standards,” Pesutto said.
“They are beautiful stories, the migrant stories, we look at it now with a kind of romanticism.
“Their life wasn’t pretentious, it was utter modesty, and everything was for the family and their children.”
Although his parents rarely discussed politics, Pesutto believes it was their values – “a sense of opportunity, honest work and an enterprising ethic” – that drew him to join the Liberal Party 30 years ago. He doesn’t subscribe to the narrative that Victoria is too progressive for a Coalition government, insisting the party must attract support from across the state.
“The Liberal Party is broad enough to be able to represent the regions, rural areas, growth suburbs, outer suburbs and inner suburbs. We have to avoid, as a party, falling into the trap that we have to choose.
“If the Labor Party can manage that breadth, why can’t we?”
But the party is a long way from the Treasury benches. In Victoria, the Liberals hold just 19 of 88 seats in the Legislative Assembly. To win government in 2026, Pesutto believes the party must transition into a more diverse and modern organisation.
“We need to reform, I don’t think we can avoid that,” Pesutto says. “But I do not believe for a minute that we cannot win in 2026.”
Key to his reform agenda is attracting new members, broadening policy discussions beyond members, professionalising the party machine and running in every election – including council contests – across the state.
“We live in a world where people have different lives, families take different shapes, people have greater agency over their identity and who they want to be, so we need to understand and accept that that diversity doesn’t have to be inconsistent with our values,” he said.
“Why should it matter whether you worship a god or not, or whether you have a certain sexual orientation. None of that should matter. If we are truly executing the party’s values and platform, we should be able to appeal to anyone.
While the past six months haven’t gone to plan, Pesutto is accustomed to political setbacks. His win in Hawthorn in 2014 came after repeated attempts over 20 years to win preselections for multiple federal seats.
The day after he lost the seat of Hawthorn at the 2018 election, he sat alone in his study in his family’s Camberwell home and plotted a way back.
The Hawthorn MP had dreamt of serving in parliament since he first ran for preselection in the west Gippsland seat of McMillan – now Monash – in 1994. But after just four years as Victoria’s shadow attorney-general, he was out of a job.
“I just knew that I had to bleed for a while and work my way back,” he said.
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