She has denied the rumours and that should be the end of speculation based on evidence amounting to no more than Credlin feeding Abbott off her fork, buying them matching Tumi luggage, holidaying together, and various other tidbits, mainly unsourced, which have swirled around Canberra for years.Yes, because a male boss and his female chief of staff holidaying together with matching luggage is never a reason to suspect something going on...
Anyhow, the bits I more-or-less approve of:
Savva’s book documents the avoidable trajectory of his downfall, with on-the-record recollections which fill in details about Credlin’s questionable behaviour and dominance of Abbott.
Despite the damage she was doing, Credlin remained in her job. Her response to criticism was to play the gender card. Abbott’s indulgence of this nonsense was surreal as he castigated his colleagues as sexist. “Do you really think that my chief of staff would be under this criticism if her name was P-e-t-e-r and not P-e-t-a?” he asked the ABC in 2014.
The week after Abbott was dumped, Credlin spoke at an Australian Women’s Weekly event and also blamed criticism of her on sexism. She also made the extraordinarily self-aggrandising claim that she “got them into government, from opposition I might add.”
Credlin’s harshest critics were women, not because they are self loathing misogynists, but because men are cowed into silence by exactly the arguments she mounts. Criticise a woman and it’s sexism. Criticise a man and it’s criticism.
Credlin continued to play the gender card yesterday in a column, saying she wasn’t the first woman to be attacked about the “nature of her professional relationships, and sadly I doubt I will be the last”. Abbott’s not the first man either, so it’s hardly a gender issue.
What a lot of critics miss is that most people who Saava quoted were ON the record. They were NOT anonymous.
ReplyDeleteWhen Tony's right wing mates were telling of the dangers of Credlin and he was oblivious to it tells you everything!