{"id":218180,"date":"2025-05-16T12:06:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T02:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=218180"},"modified":"2025-05-16T12:06:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T02:06:58","slug":"former-victorian-opposition-leader-john-pesutto-facing-bankruptcy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=218180","title":{"rendered":"Former Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto facing bankruptcy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Former Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto is facing bankruptcy after being ordered to pay $2.3 million towards Liberal colleague Moira Deeming\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In December, the Federal Court ordered Pesutto to pay $315,000 in damages to Deeming, along with her legal expenses, after finding he had repeatedly defamed her by falsely suggesting she was linked to neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The court has spent months determining how much of Deeming\u2019s legal costs Pesutto should cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The court\u2019s full reasons for awarding the $2.3 million have not yet been published. Pesutto is required to pay the full amount in a lump sum or risk bankruptcy, which would force him out of Parliament and trigger a by-election in the marginal seat of Hawthorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also has the option to appeal the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being ordered to pay $2.3 million towards Liberal colleague Moira Deeming\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":218181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,999,35],"tags":[13672,993,16289,8],"class_list":["post-218180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-australia-politics","category-breaking-news","tag-john-pesutto","tag-melbourne","tag-moira-deeming","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218182,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218180\/revisions\/218182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/218181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}