{"id":134685,"date":"2025-09-11T07:34:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T07:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/134685\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T07:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T07:34:09","slug":"victorian-state-director-stuart-smith-resigns-after-leaked-texts-mocking-women-and-mp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/134685\/","title":{"rendered":"Victorian state director Stuart Smith resigns after leaked texts mocking women and MP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Davis has been defending a court challenge to the party\u2019s decision to approve a $1.55 million loan to former leader John Pesutto. A handful of members on the administrative committee claim the decision was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The committee approved the loan in June, sparing Pesutto bankruptcy and the party a byelection in his marginal seat of Hawthorn, after the Federal Court found he had repeatedly defamed his colleague Moira Deeming and ordered he pay $2.3 million worth of her costs.<\/p>\n

Davis has called for members to resign from the administrative committee<\/a> if they held \u201ccontempt\u201d for democratic decisions.<\/p>\n

Most members of the administrative committee will be challenged on Saturday, and several Liberals speculated that the leak of the WhatsApp messages was timed to cause maximum damage to his supporters.<\/p>\n

The final make-up of the committee will ultimately choose the next state director to replace Smith.<\/p>\n

Preselections for all lower house seats open on Monday. Preparing for the 2026 election campaign without a state director alarmed many Liberals on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Some sitting Liberals MPs have been warned that they will be challenged at preselection.<\/p>\n

Loading<\/p>\n

Smith resigned on Thursday morning \u201cin the best interests of the party\u201d after The Australian published leaked WhatsApp messages from December 2024. Along with mocking McArthur, he had suggested the women\u2019s council passed a resolution only when two men told them to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the best interests of the party, I have tendered my resignation to minimise distractions from the important task of winning the next election,\u201d Smith said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI regret the comments and have apologised for them. I thank the party for the opportunity and wish the team well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Enterprise<\/p>\n

Enterprise Victoria executive director Nadine Jones.Credit: LinkedIn<\/p>\n

The Age has not obtained the Smith messages in question. However, this masthead in May reported the existence of a WhatsApp group involving Smith<\/a> that was causing alarm, when the former executive director of the party\u2019s fundraising body, Enterprise Victoria, lodged a dispute with Fair Work.<\/p>\n

That dispute has since been settled, with a six-figure payout, sources told The Age.<\/p>\n

Jones alleged that she was sacked from Enterprise Victoria for complaining about bullying at head office. The party rejected that.<\/p>\n

She made a 36-page statement to Fair Work, obtained by The Age. She claimed she was set up to fail, excluded, given unachievable performance indicators, denigrated, had witnessed sexist comments and was the target of a more than year-long campaign to \u201cget rid of Nadine\u201d.<\/p>\n

All allegations were denied by the party.<\/p>\n

Her affidavit was sent to every member of the administrative committee. Multiple Liberals have told The Age they should have acted on her claims about the workplace, and some have been critical of Smith and Davis for not recusing themselves from that matter and questioned whether they were acting for the good of the party or themselves.<\/p>\n

Jones was sympathetic to the women who had been denigrated by Smith and said on Thursday she was not surprised at the revelations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely not. I\u2019m relieved that he\u2019s been held accountable \u2026 for the good of the party,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI\u2019m glad not to be there any more. The experience was horrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

She reaffirmed her position that the Liberal Party head office was full of misogyny and bullying.<\/p>\n

McArthur said on Thursday that Smith\u2019s resignation was the only acceptable course of action.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrashing of women is just not acceptable in this world, not in the political world, not in the corporate world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Victorian<\/p>\n

Victorian Opposition Leader Brad Battin.Credit: Wayne Taylor<\/p>\n

Battin said: \u201cStuart Smith\u2019s resignation was the right thing to do. His comments were unacceptable and do not reflect the standards of professionalism, integrity and inclusion that we all expect of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI lead a team that aspires to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity and inclusion. My focus, and the focus of every one of my MPs, is to deliver real solutions for every Victorian \u2013 safer communities, better services and cost-of-living relief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get alerts on breaking news as it happens. Sign up for our Breaking News Alert<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Davis has been defending a court challenge to the party\u2019s decision to approve a $1.55 million loan to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-134685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}