#womenssafety

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/in-bringing-a-machine-gun-to-a-knife-fight-deeming-has-set-back-the-cause-of-women-20260707-p60de9.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

For someone who says she wants the world to be a safer place for women and girls, Moira Deeming sure has a funny way of going about it.

After all, it took less than 24 hours for police to dismiss the Victorian MP’s allegation that her colleague, Matthew Guy, put her in “some kind of headlock” at a community function on May 23. By any metric, that’s an extraordinarily fast exoneration. Video footage appears to show that Guy instead placed his hand on Deeming’s shoulder and the two leaned towards one another briefly to speak in a loud room.

On Tuesday afternoon, almost two weeks on from the complaint being made public, Deeming posted a video message to her supporters on Facebook. In the comments section, she said she had never used the word “violent” in her report to police. Yet in text messages to colleagues, Deeming described Guy’s grip as feeling “like someone smashed me in the base of my skull with a wine bottle – but it was Matthew Guy grabbing me violently in some kind of headlock”.

Given the pair already had what Deeming described as a “very hostile” relationship before the function, it’s entirely possible that her experience was one of intense discomfort and violation but a criminal offence it does not make.

Deeming, who is a survivor of child sexual abuse, is on the record saying that one of the reasons she went into politics is because she is “driven by a desire to make sure other children and women don’t suffer like I did”.

What Deeming is either failing to realise or choosing to ignore is that in bringing a machine gun to a knife fight, she’s not just shooting her own credibility. Instead, she’s wounding the very people she has said so many times she wants to protect.

When she was suspended from the Liberal Party in 2023, Deeming told Peta Credlin in an interview with Sky News: “I know what it’s like to be vulnerable, the consequences of being vulnerable, and having no power, and having no voice, and not being able to stop men from coming near you, and even worse, is a horrible feeling”.

But if making an exaggerated claim of gendered violence is bad, doing so against a male colleague within an environment like the Liberal Party – which doesn’t have the best track record on being a hospitable place for women, or the most progressive on women’s issues – is infinitely worse. And her refusal to apologise to Guy, before she headed to the Supreme Court in a last ditch attempt to stop her exasperated colleagues giving her the boot, would be a new level of self-immolation if it didn’t injure so many other women in the process.

Women already struggle to be believed when reporting an assault against a powerful man or colleague. Even after a Federal Court judge found in 2024 that on the balance of probabilities former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann raped his then-colleague Brittany Higgins, a small but vocal group of people still believe she is a liar and that the assault did not happen – even though research consistently shows false allegations of sexual assault are extraordinarily rare. Deeming’s claim has inadvertently bolstered this doubt.

It will legitimise the misguided belief among those who question a victim and their credibility that false allegations are as common as assaults themselves. How easy will it be for these same people to discredit the next woman who comes forward with a legitimate allegation of physical or sexual abuse? How many women will not have the confidence to disclose that violence, or report the matter to their employer or the police for fear of not being believed?

The Liberals are already haemorrhaging voters to One Nation – a party that has spent a decade arguing that the Family Court of Australia should be dismantled, in large part because Pauline Hanson believes women use the system to make false allegations of violence against men to punish them. The timing of Deeming’s allegation and subsequent obstinacy couldn’t be worse.

• Katy Hall is a senior editor and regular columnist.

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