and it was personal to me, and that's why I taped it.
…
The conversation that I had with Ms Deeming the – the day before was, obviously, a conversation between her and I, and I wanted to make sure that – that the whole events weren't turned around and misconstrued. So for me that was – that was the key element of why I did tape it, and – and it was, for me, I suppose, in many respects an insurance policy.
191 Mr Pesutto did not tell his lawyers that he knew that Mr Southwick had made the recordings until one week before the trial commenced, upon which it was immediately produced to Mrs Deeming's solicitors.
192 Both Mr Southwick and Mr Pesutto swore that they did not listen to the tape before preparing their respective affidavits.
193 It is an extraordinary state of affairs that both of them sat by, knowing of the existence of the recordings, and said nothing, when they knew that each other member of their own leadership team, Mr Pintos-Lopez – and Mrs Deeming – were preparing and had filed and served affidavits (including in reply) of their best recollections of who said what to whom at the meeting.
194 It is equally extraordinary that Mr Pesutto instructed his lawyers to make an application to me for Dr Bach to give his evidence from England via video link, which was supported by a 13-page summary of the differences between the evidence of Dr Bach on the one hand and the evidence of Mrs Deeming on the other hand about what was said at the 19 March meeting. (I refused the application in large part precisely because of the significant differences in their respective recollections. See Deeming v Pesutto [2024] FCA 951.)
195 As it turns out, no witness's account of the meeting in their affidavits was anywhere near accurate or complete. Both parties invited me to draw adverse inferences against each relevant deponent for having failed to give an accurate account of it.
196 Each witness might be said to varying degrees to have provided their own slant to things, and to have recorded their memories through the prism of their own cause, but I do not accept that any witness gave a deliberately untruthful version of the meeting in their affidavits.
197 Although Mr Southwick said he recorded the meeting because he had formed the view that he could not trust Mrs Deeming and he saw the recordings as an "insurance policy", it is mystifying why he kept the existence of the recordings a secret for so long after Mrs Deeming had commenced this proceeding against his leader. Mr Pesutto's explanation for not having
