Get ready for a good read with Credlin

Sky News host and former prime ministerial chief of staff Peta Credlin is joining The Australian as a columnist.

Commentator Peta Credlin. Picture: Aaron Francis

Sky News host and former prime ministerial chief of staff Peta Credlin is joining The Australian as a columnist.

“It’s been a privilege to have been a national News Corp Sunday columnist for six years. To now join The Australian as well, with its stable of thinkers, provocateurs and experts, is about as good as it gets, if you’re like me and believe in the battle of ideas,” she says.

Credlin, 50, is a Sky News political contributor and anchor of her own self-titled show; she writes a weekly column in News Corp’s Sunday papers (and will continue to do so) and is a political contributor for Nine Radio, with her on-air slot carried in Queensland, WA, NSW and Victoria.

While she is best known for her stint as chief of staff to former prime minister Tony Abbott, Credlin has embraced her post-politics career in the media. Her nightly hour of political analysis on Sky News has been a strong performer against its commercial rivals, in what is the most competitive timeslot in Australian television.

Credlin has been a vocal critic of the Andrews government’s handling of the coronavirus over the past year, accusing Labor of leaving Victorians with a “real lack of hope”. But she has also taken aim at the Liberal opposition in her home state of Victoria.

“They’ve got no backbone, they can’t land a punch,” Credlin says. “Politics at a state level in the Liberal Party have been divided and ridden with personal agendas in warring camps for more than 20 years.

“If you look at the last 30 years they have only had one term in parliament and that’s why: they are too busy scrapping among themselves.”

Credlin’s aggressive stance on the Victorian handling of the pandemic saw her attacked by journalists from rival news organisations.

“If you don’t want to call me a journalist, I don’t care. I write columns, I do a live show every night at 6pm and I do radio, so I don’t care what you call me,” she says. Credlin’s first column for The Australian will be published in the next few weeks.