Credlin to Abbott accusers: ‘sneering cowards won’t define me’

Peta Credlin has powerfully rebutted rumours she had a sexual relationship with Tony Abbott.

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“Completely false, utterly untrue, unfounded and wrong.”

That is what Peta Credlin has to say about rumours she had a sexual relationship with her boss, Tony Abbott.

“I can’t be any clearer — it is about as low as it gets,” Ms ­Credlin said. “It’s vicious and ­malicious.”

In a rebuttal to ­salacious gossip that exploded on to the front pages over the weekend, Ms Credlin told The Australian yesterday: “The idea that my relationship with the prime ­minister was anything other than professional is completely false.

“People tell me to ignore it but I refuse to let this stand. I earned my good reputation by working hard for four cabinet ministers, three opposition leaders and one prime minister so I am not going to let these sneering cowards ­define me.

“Nobody ever accused me of not being smart. Nobody ever said I was not up to the job.

“You don’t survive in those jobs unless you’re up to it because you tend to get found out pretty quickly.”

Rumours of an affair between Ms Credlin and Mr Abbott have circulated for years, but intensified this week following the ­release of a book by Niki Savva, a columnist with The Australian.

Savva revealed how NSW ­Liberal conservative Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, now a minister, raised the whispering campaign directly with Mr Abbott in February last year.

“Politics is about perceptions,’’ Senator Fierravanti-Wells told Mr Abbott.

“Rightly or wrongly, the perception is that you are sleeping with your chief of staff.

“That’s the perception, and you need to deal with it.’’

Savva reported that Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin had told the senator the rumours were not true. An anonymous source in the book described Ms Credlin as Mr ­Abbott’s Wallis Simpson — the woman for whom a king once ­abdicated.

Ms Credlin told The Australian 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”. She lamented the personal ­nature of the attacks, saying: “I hope this doesn’t put off smart women from joining the political fray.”

She also hit out at Savva over her refusal to come to her for a comment, saying it was ­“extraordinary”.

Savva told Sky News yesterday that one of the main reasons she did not go to Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin for comment was ­because she “didn’t trust the ­responses”.

“I learnt from bitter experience, as did colleagues of Mr ­Abbott, that their version of events could not always be trusted,” she said.

Ms Credlin told The Australian that she “always thought a dignified silence” was the best way to deal with rumours.

Now, she said, it was time to deal with the “bile” concerning her relationship with Mr Abbott, whom she described as a “decent man”, by squashing the rumour definitively and, she hoped, ­forever.

In an opinion piece written ­exclusively for The Australian, Ms Credlin said she feared the Liberal Party was deep in the process of “ripping itself apart” just as the Rudd-Gillard government had done, with cabinet ministers anonymously attacking each other and staff.

Of Savva’s book, The Road to Ruin, she said: “It’s billed as ­explaining why (Mr Abbott) was ­removed from office.

“We all know that’s a farce. The book is an ­attempt to justify the coup.”

Mr Abbott also released a statement yesterday, saying in part: “The best response to this book is the objective record of the Abbott government. The boats were stopped. The carbon tax and the mining tax were repealed. And a strong start was made to the vital task of budget repair.”

He added: “I’m not in the business of raking over old coals nor am I in the business of responding to scurrilous gossip and smear.”

Bill Shorten agreed with Ms Credlin that the Coalition was “ripping itself to bits” as its members relived the Abbott-Turnbull leadership struggle.

“This latest book really is a case of: they all hate each other in the Liberal Party and we are seeing the whole ugly mess,” the Opposition Leader said. “There is a civil war going on in the Liberal Party.”

Michael Kroger, the president of the Liberal Party in Victoria, ­acknowledged the Abbott era was “an extraordinary period and these events should be documented” but said Savva’s book was ­undermined by its use of “unsourced and salacious” material.

“Niki Savva is a doyen of the press gallery. On the other hand her dislike of Peta Credlin and Tony is reasonably well known,” Mr Kroger told Sky News.

“I think it detracts from her writing and she’s got lots of quotes on the record from staffers and that’s great for a journalist and a writer of Niki’s standing to have that but I think she’s let herself down a bit by some of the slightly more salacious things we could have done without.”