Category Archives: Liberal party

Herald Sun failed to seek response from Victorian MP Sam Groth and wife before article that invaded privacy, court documents claim

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Groth and wife Brittany are suing a News Corp paper for defamation and breach of privacy over incorrect claims of inappropriate relationship

The Herald Sun failed to seek a response from Brittany Groth, the wife of Sam Groth, the Victorian Liberals deputy leader and former tennis star, before wrongly outing her as a victim of child sexual assault who was preyed upon by her now-husband when he was her coach, the couple allege in federal court documents.

The Herald and Weekly Times, along with reporter Stephen Drill, who wrote the articles, and his editor Sam Weir, are being sued in the federal court by Brittany Groth, in the first test of a new statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy, and by Sam Groth for defamation.

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Victorian Liberal members to push for regulated cannabis market at state council

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Proposal to treat cannabis similarly to alcohol among 62 policy motions on draft agenda, alongside increased parental leave and scrapping net zero

Rank-and-file Victorian Liberal party members will use this month’s state council meeting to push for a regulated cannabis market for adult use, overhaul heritage and planning laws to tackle the housing crisis and introduce a full year of parental leave with a “daddy quota”.

The motions are among 62 on the draft agenda for the Victorian Liberal state council – the party’s annual general meeting – on 12-13 September. Other motions include proposals to scrap net zero targets, renters’ rights reforms and diversity quotas.

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Brittany Higgins ordered to pay almost $350,000 in defamation damages to Linda Reynolds

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Former defence minister’s reputation was damaged by social media posts by her former staffer, judge rules

Linda Reynolds has won her defamation case against Brittany Higgins in the Western Australian supreme court, marking the end of a protracted legal battle with her former staffer.

The state supreme court judge Paul Tottle ruled on Wednesday that the former defence minister’s reputation was damaged by social media posts published by Higgins in July 2023.

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Jeremy Rockliff says he expects crossbenchers will allow Liberals to form government – as it happened

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Controversial MP Mark Latham says he has “broken no law” as he publicly responds to a former partner’s allegations of domestic violence.

The former federal Labor leader and NSW One Nation leader has described recent reports involving former partner Nathalie Matthews as “false, reckless and irresponsible”.

I have broken no law. The police did not involve themselves in the AVO matter.

I have breached no standing orders of the Legislative Council. The NSW parliament has stringent processes about inappropriate behaviour, and in my six years there, I’ve never been notified of a complaint against me.

The Marine Rescue Batemans Bay and Bermagui crews said sea conditions were favourable last night, but it was quite dark with little assistance from the moon, and they had to navigate around numerous whales.

They are searching an area offshore from just north of Narooma to south of Bermagui under the direction of Marine Area Command and will continue to do so until otherwise instructed.

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Early tallies in Tasmania election point to Liberal gains

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Support appears to grow for incumbent government in election triggered by no-confidence vote

Early voting counts in Tasmania’s election points to the Liberals being in the box seat to rule, with the incumbent government’s vote rising and Labor’s collapsing.

Saturday’s vote, triggered when the minority Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff, lost a no-confidence motion in early June, is the island’s second in 16 months.

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Firefighters warned of ‘dangers of partisan politics’ after truck displays Liberal corflutes at Melbourne protest

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Country Fire Authority says it ‘must always remain apolitical’ amid fallout over rally that also featured offensive slogans on trucks

Victoria’s Country Fire Authority has issued a warning to its senior leadership about the “dangers of partisan politics” and stressed it should remain “apolitical” after Liberal party-branded corflutes were attached to a fire truck at a rally in Melbourne’s western suburbs at the weekend.

A truck from the CFA Inverleigh brigade displayed Liberal party corflutes during a rally in Werribee on Sunday, with a photo of the vehicle shared on social media by the party’s South West Metro branch.

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Former NSW MP Daryl Maguire found guilty of misleading corruption inquiry

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Ex-partner of former premier Gladys Berejiklian misled Icac probe over $48m property development, magistrate finds

Ex-Liberal MP Daryl Maguire has been found guilty of misleading a corruption probe about benefits expected from a $48m property development sale.

The former member for Wagga Wagga, whose clandestine relationship with ex-NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian led to her political downfall, appeared at Sydney’s Downing Centre Court for the verdict on Friday.

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Moira Deeming offered John Pesutto chance to avoid bankruptcy on condition Liberal party assured her preselection

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Payment of $2.3m in defamation costs Pesutto owes would have been delayed until 2027 under deal, which was not accepted by Liberal party

Moira Deeming offered John Pesutto a chance to avoid bankruptcy and delay payment of $2.3m in legal costs until 2027 on the condition her preselection for the next election be assured by the Liberal party.

The upper house MP commenced bankruptcy proceedings earlier this month after the former Liberal leader failed to pay the costs ordered by the federal court in May. The court found Pesutto repeatedly defamed Deeming by falsely implying she sympathised with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

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Former federal Liberal MP Bridget Archer recruited by Rockliff for snap Tasmania poll

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Bridget Archer lost Bass to Labor at the federal election and is a moderate ally of the premier who suffered a no confidence vote last week

Prominent former federal Liberal MP, Bridget Archer, has announced she will contest a snap Tasmanian election for the embattled state government, amid ongoing political upheaval.

The Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff, is expected to call an election on Tuesday – only 15 months after Tasmanians last went to the polls – after the state parliament passed a motion of no confidence in him.

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Confusion and chaos reign in Tasmanian parliament with no endgame in sight

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A vote of no-confidence in Jeremy Rockliff’s government has pushed the state to the brink of an election that all the major players agree is a bad idea

Craig Garland, the fisherman turned maverick independent MP from Tasmania’s north-western corner, summed it up best when he told state parliament on Thursday morning he was “a bit confused”.

Garland wasn’t confused about what he was doing – he calmly backed a no-confidence motion in the Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff. But he expressed doubts about how the Tasmanian parliament got here, and what lay ahead.

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Sussan Ley says name spelling change was due to ‘punk phase’ – not numerology

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Opposition leader dismisses numerology comment as a ‘flippant remark’ and ‘actually not the reason’ for extra ‘s’

The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, has walked back claims that an interest in numerology was the reason she added extra “s” in her name, claiming her comment she made to a journalist in 2015 was a “flippant remark” and not correct.

Ley told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Friday that the name change came during her “punk phase” as a teenager, shooting down a long-running story that she had added the extra letter because of a belief it would make her life more exciting.

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Victorian Liberals question funding unfair dismissal claim defence while refusing to bail out John Pesutto

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Exclusive: Rift comes as Pesutto supporters remain optimistic a deal for the party to loan him money to help pay $2.3m in defamation costs will be struck

Several Victorian Liberals have accused the party of “hypocrisy” after it paid lawyers to represent its administrative wing in an unfair dismissal claim, while so far declining to save former party leader John Pesutto from bankruptcy.

On Monday, lawyers for Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming initiated bankruptcy proceedings against Pesutto after he failed to meet a deadline to pay her $2.3m in legal costs. Pesutto has less than 21 days to pay, enter into a payment agreement or face bankruptcy, which would lead to a byelection in his seat of Hawthorn.

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After a week of spectacular self-sabotage, the Victorian Liberal party’s pain is only just beginning

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As John Pesutto scrambles to raise funds to pay $2.3m owed to Moira Deeming, the saga threatens to ‘engulf the entire party’, including its new leader

It was meant to be the Victorian Liberals’ week. Instead, the party – now almost synonymous with political self-sabotage – has imploded once again.

And it’s likely only going to get worse from here as the countdown officially begins for former leader John Pesutto to pay the $2.3m in legal fees he owes Moira Deeming or face bankruptcy after he was found in December to have defamed her.

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This article was amended on 31 May 2025. Jess Wilson challenged for Victorian Liberal leadership, not deputy leadership as stated in an earlier version.

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Australia news live: Ley to unveil shadow ministry after deal done to reunite Coalition; Labor seizes third Senate spot in Victoria

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Liberal leader begins contacting MPs to inform them of their roles in her new frontbench. Follow today’s news live

Nationals frontbencher Bridget McKenzie has insisted her party never made free votes for cabinet members a condition of returning to Coalition with the Liberals, as the two parties draw closer to a deal.

McKenzie also took a shot at Liberal MPs who were giving her and her colleagues free advice. She told Channel Seven’s Sunrise:

There are many Liberal MPs who want to give us gratuitous advice about how to run our party room. I’m happy to give them membership forms if they’d like to join it. But a coalition works best when everybody respects the independence of both parties.

That wasn’t put to the room.

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Malcolm Turnbull accuses ‘stupid’ Nationals of ‘holding a gun’ to Liberal party’s head with Coalition split

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MPs pushing behind the scenes for parties to mend the rift acknowledge ‘really messy’ week as regional areas battle floods and drought

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has accused the Nationals of “holding a gun to the Liberal party’s head” over the threat to split the Coalition this week, claiming the rural party been “stupid” in its actions.

The Nationals MP Darren Chester, who was among a band of MPs pushing behind the scenes for the Coalition to mend its rift, acknowledged it was “frustrating” for the opposition to be bickering among themselves as regional and rural areas battled floods and droughts, and urged colleagues to get on with the job.

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Littleproud says discussions about reuniting Coalition a ‘positive move’ – as it happened

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Liberals will attend a virtual party room meeting this afternoon after Ley and Littleproud attempt to broker agreement two days after dramatic split. Follow today’s news live

Minns says community ‘no doubt bracing’ for more bad news after flooding death

The NSW premier is “bracing for more tough news” following news of a death in the state’s inundated mid-north coast.

It’s devastating for that man and his family and his friends. [It’s] a tight-knit community on the mid-north coast, and to lose anyone in these natural disasters is obviously horrifying. So I’m very sorry for that man’s passing.

We should be bracing for more tough news over the next 24 hours. We’re very grateful we got enormous amount of expertise, emergency service personnel and thousands of volunteers who are on site, but when you have major natural disasters, obviously, you get terrible news as a result, and that community no doubt will be bracing in the next 24 hours.

I’m sorry about that. That would be incredibly anxious period, waiting that period of time for a rescue.

I can assure the public that we have got a massive emergency service contingent on the Mid North Coast. There’s 2,500 emergency service workers including 2,200 SES volunteers and professionals that are on site. Over 500 vehicles and boasts, 13 helicopters, hundreds of drones, so this is a major operation.

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The Ross and Rachel of Australian politics are still on a break – but the Coalition will probably give things another go

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The Liberals and Nationals are likely to get back together – not because the bickering exes are a perfect match, but because there’s too much to lose in the divorce

Take the Taylor Swift songs off your Spotify queue, put the ice-cream back in the freezer and hold fire on the angry diary entries: the Liberals and Nationals might not be breaking up after all.

The extraordinary conscious uncoupling of the Liberals and Nationals – their plans to go their separate ways and work on themselves – lasted exactly 48 hours and 30 minutes: the time between 11.45am on Tuesday, when David Littleproud said he needed time to think, and 12.15pm on Thursday, when he told a hastily convened press conference that he was willing to give things another go.

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Bradfield and Goldstein face nervous weekend wait for election result but Tim Wilson ‘very relaxed’

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AEC considers sending staff to airport ‘at late hours’ to collect final postal and overseas votes before midnight deadline

Liberal Tim Wilson has said he is “very relaxed” despite his lead over Zoe Daniel in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein slipping to 206 votes with late postal and overseas ballots from as far away as Nairobi still to be counted.

Candidates in the Sydney seat of Bradfield also face an anxious weekend, with no more counting to take place until Monday. On Friday afternoon, Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian led the independent candidate, Nicolette Boele, by just 43 votes.

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Push to save John Pesutto from bankruptcy after $2.3m Moira Deeming defamation costs order

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Online fundraiser launched as former Victorian Liberal leader hopes to avoid being forced to resign from parliament if he is unable to pay the sum

Friends of the former Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto have launched an online fundraiser in a bid to help him “avoid the possibility of bankruptcy” after he was ordered to pay more than $2.3m in costs following his loss in a defamation case brought by the Liberal MP Moira Deeming.

The federal court registrar Alison Legge handed down the decision during a short hearing on Friday in which she ordered Pesutto pay $2,308,873.11 in legal costs.

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Australia news live: Anthony Albanese says Tanya Plibersek ‘very positive’ about new role after being shifted from environment portfolio

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Follow today’s news live

Labor’s Tanya Plibersek has avoided comment about her ministerial desires or expectations, offering little other than general remarks when pressed this morning on the issue of the forthcoming cabinet announcement from Anthony Albanese.

Plibersek, who previously held the environment portfolio, told Sunrise this morning that cabinet decisions were “completely a matter for the prime minister” and that she was just “very grateful” to be on the front bench, and to have won the election, and to get to do “a good job for the government and for the people of Australia” again … and, well, you get the idea.

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