upper house MP Moira Deeming<\/a>. The loan to Mr Pesutto was made to pay his debt to Ms Deeming after he was successfully sued for defamation.<\/p>\nAfter Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson helped install Brian Loughnane as the new federal president over Ms Harkin\u2019s opponent Philip Davis last month, it was hoped that many of the divisions that have dogged the party for years would settle.<\/p>\n
While Ms Harkin\u2019s resignation will reignite tensions, some senior members of the party believe it will help the Victorian division move on from those divisions and focus on the November state election.<\/p>\n
A senior Liberal figure said it was \u201cno great shock that the person trying to destroy the party by suing it for the last year has finally resigned\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe only surprising thing is that she didn\u2019t do so sooner,\u201d he said. \u201cThe other litigants should reflect on whether they want to continue to be associated with someone so intent on making life easier for Jacinta Allan and Labor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liberal members suspect Ms Harkin will now join One Nation. The Australian contacted her for comment. <\/p>\n
Such a move would come amid a long line of defections to the populist party at the federal and state level, including former Nat\u00adionals leader Barnaby Joyce, who announced in December he would join Pauline Hanson. Former Liberal senator Cory Bernadi followed suit, joining in February.<\/p>\n
The defections come amid a boom in the polls for One Nation, as Liberal and Nationals voters desert the party.<\/p>\n
Victorian One Nation candidate Darren Hercus, one of up to 100 candidates the party plans to run across both houses at the upcoming November election, claimed the party had received more than 1000 applications for\u00a0political candidacy positions including from \u201cdoctors and \u00adlawyers\u201d. <\/p>\n
It follows Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell in 2022 becoming One Nation\u2019s first upper house member of the Victorian parliament.<\/p>\n
Ms Harkin, director of education programs and a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, told ABC radio on Friday that a One Nation fundraiser she attended the previous week had a \u201cvery high energy and \u201cpositive feel\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat interested me most was the spread of type of people who were there,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was a great interest to me. When we\u2019ve had conversations here about a presumption of people who have lower socio-economic class or lack of academic qualifi\u00adcations or whatever being One Nation supporters, it was definitely not what was in the room. <\/p>\n
\u201cHigh-profile business people, money, just a great spread of ordinary Australians.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said a lot of people she spoke with had not been politically engaged before, and were just concerned at the direction \u2026 and tenor of the country. \u201cIt was very positive. They had a really like a positive energy and vibe in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read related topics:One Nation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ms Harkin, who has sat on the state executive, submitted her resignation to the Liberal Party\u2019s Victorian division…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21],"class_list":["post-35597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}