I was so close to writing a good news story about cancel culture.

There have been many examples of bravery coming from very unlikely places, people, and organisations all of which have much to lose by standing against cancellation attempts.

I was going to regale the audience with the gallant story of how Bluesfest – the music festival based in the formerly hippy town of Byron Bay – was steadfast in their decision to include the ‘controversial’ band Sticky Fingers in the lineup, despite popular artists pulling out of the festival in protest.

Then there was the story of the founder of the vitamin giant, Blackmores that didn’t back down on their views about The Voice to Parliament, despite calls to boycott the company.

I was about to announce – prematurely it would now seem – the death throes of cancel culture. After all, if businesses where many of the consumers are of the Left can take a valiant stand against cancel culture, anyone can, right?

Well, I was wrong. An organisation that should have known better and has everything to lose by giving into the mob – namely, the Liberal Party – has become ground zero for cancel culture.

Over the weekend, the Let Women Speak event organised by UK woman’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (Posie Parker) was held on the steps of Parliament in Melbourne with police protection against the counter-protesters. These same police let in a bunch of neo-Nazis. How and why this happened is something the media seems completely disinterested in. Instead, they would rather smear the entire contingent of mostly disaffected lefty women as ‘Nazis’. But you would expect nothing less from the Victorian press.

What was infuriating (but unfortunately not surprising) was the Leader of the Opposition’s response. John Pesutto tried to expel Liberal Party member, Moira Deeming, for attending the event.

This move seems to be, at the very least, daft, if not completely unjust. After all, it wasn’t Moira’s fault that neo-Nazis turned up and stole the show away from the women who were there to speak – the entire point of the event.

Waiting for the full story to play out before throwing Moira under the bus would have cost the Liberal Party nothing. They aren’t a business who will lose money if boycotted. There is no election in Victoria anytime soon. So, why the rush? And at any rate, the people they are pleasing by taking this action wouldn’t have voted for them anyway.

Instead, this is an action that will most likely damage the Liberal Party.

The people that were gathered to hear women’s stories about how redefining womanhood away from biological sex has impacted their lives are a politically unrepresented group.

If Labor and the Greens continue to insist on sacrificing woman’s rights – or just plain sanity – the women standing with Moira won’t have any democratic representation left.

To put it plainly, almost no one who thinks that removing Moira is a good idea will vote for the Liberals, but almost everyone who is outraged by this is a potential Liberal voter. Even the former Greens members that attended with Moira might be convinced to hold their nose and vote for the coalition if sex-based rights are an issue they care about and no other party is delivering.

If there is an issue which a savvy politician might look to form a broad alliance on – this is it!

Then there are all the initiatives to get more women in the Liberal Party, which have been completely undone by this move (and are conspicuous in their silence, I might add).

Expelling a woman, who was campaigning for women, and who thinks that a woman is an adult human female, is a strange strategy if the party wants to win over more women. But what would I know, I am just a women?

I was already a reluctant Liberal voter for this weekend’s election. If only there was any other remotely sensible candidate running in my electorate, I would happily park my vote with them instead.

But seeing how Moira Deeming has been treated makes me want to do the most juvenile thing of all: draw a sausage-like object on my ballot with the caption: ‘Balls, the things that women don’t have and neither does the leadership of the Liberal Party.’

Dara Macdonald is the founder of the private members club All Minus One (allminusone.org.au) and writes on Substack as the Conservative Vagabond (daramacdonald.substack.com).