Calls for Liberal Party unity and support for Jess Wilson ahead of state election, forget Moira Deeming
Victorian Liberal leader Phil Davis warned his party against chasing One Nation to the fringes of Australian politics and urged his own warring state executive to make peace with Opposition Leader Jess Wilson to give him a clear lead into the November state election.
Addressing broadcaster Peta Credlin, state executive member Colleen Harkin and other prominent critics, Davis said an agenda was being driven to split and reform the party through Sky News and News Corp newspapers.
“Everything Credlin has learned about what’s going on in the party comes from Harkin, who was on my board and didn’t understand that he needed to resign,” Davis said.
“The people in the party who are trying to drag us into becoming One Nation-lite fundamentally don’t understand Victorian politics.
“Every election we’ve had success in Victoria, we’ve essentially won from the centre. We’re not winning from the margins. We can’t win from the margins.”
Davis made these comments during a lengthy interview. Age It follows a week of intra-party intrigue that culminated in MP Moira Deeming being confirmed unopposed in the upper house as the party’s lead candidate for the Western Metropolitan Region.
Davis, who unsuccessfully promised to end the devastating infighting that began three years ago when then-leader John Pesutto led a vote to oust Deeming from the Liberal party room, has denied campaigning against Deeming, upper house leader Bev McArthur and other conservative MPs in preselection contests.
“I didn’t make a single appeal to a delegate before the meeting,” he said, adding that Deeming personally approved the Sunday primary.
Asked whether it would be in the best interests of the party to pre-select a candidate other than Deeming, Davis left the question hanging.
“That’s a very good question. I think for three years all we did was talk about Moira and JP.” [Pesutto]and this needs to stop. If we want to be successful in the 2026 elections, the party needs to stop talking about an incident that happened three years ago.
“What we need to do is talk about Jess. [Wilson]. “Stop talking about Moira, talk about Jess.”
Davis denied reports of a rift between him and Wilson, describing their relationship as professional and citing “overwhelming” support for his leadership among party members, leaders and officeholders.
He took ultimate responsibility for the vetting failure that saw Deeming lose party votes to Dinesh Gourisetty hours before it was revealed the businessman had referenced a convicted child sex offender. However, Davis accused unknown party members of disregarding this information to inflict maximum damage on Gourisetty and the party.
“I think there were people at the time who published this information to cause the greatest damage, and they did. It looks like it, it smells like it, it feels like it – a classic political coup,” he said.
“I’ve been in politics for 50-odd years and this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. This was a high-profile, controversial primary and missing that did huge damage to the party.”
“I take full responsibility for any failure. I am responsible, I am the president, the responsibility falls on me.”
Davis chaired the Application Review Committee, which reviewed Gourisetty and other primary election candidates. The process involved background investigations carried out by Aletheia Intelligence, a private company owned by Menzies Research Center chief executive David Hughes and political consultant Luke Bennett.
Davis apologized to party members for the failure and said the party would make changes to its vetting processes.
The Liberal Party has been grappling for 30 years with how best to deal with growing support for One Nation, a party that has traditionally enjoyed the support of disgruntled Liberal and National Party voters. Davis, who was a state MP when One Nation founder Pauline Hanson first came to the fore, rejected an offer from her former boss, former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, for the Coalition to adopt One Nation as a government partner.
“As much as I love Jeff… he’s dead wrong. Jeff Kennett is wrong about One Nation,” Davis said. “We must compete to win government on our own. If we let them, one nation will eat our lunch.”
“If you look at the seats we have to win in this election, whether in the west or the south-east, they are strongly influenced by immigrants. The Liberal Party needs to be an open and welcoming party, embracing all countries.”
When asked about the rise of One Nation, Wilson consistently said that his goal was majority government and that decisions about preferences would be made by others in the party.
