How Peta Credlin relationship brought down Tony Abbott

Peta Credlin has described claims that she and Tony Abbott had an intimate relationship as ‘laughable’ and ‘offensive’.

Then chief of staff Peta Credlin with Tony Abbott in 2013. Picture: Andrew Ellinghausen

Tony Abbott was personally warned that the perception he was having an affair with Peta Credlin was damaging him as prime minister and he needed to sacrifice his chief of staff to protect the government.

NSW Liberal conservative Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, now a minister, raised the whispering campaign with Mr Abbott when she confronted him about the Coalition’s performance on the eve of a vote on whether to spill the leadership 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.’’

Mr Abbott was told if he did not move on Ms Credlin, he would lose the prime ministership. The account of the unvarnished face-to-face exchange of what Mr Abbott’s colleagues believed was at the core of the government’s failings is revealed in a new book, The Road to Ruin, by political commentator and author Niki Savva. An exclusive extract is published in The Weekend Australian today.

UPDATE: Claims are ‘laughable’, Credlin says (see below).

Mr Abbott told Senator Fierravanti-Wells he wasn’t going to sack Ms Credlin. “He said the rumours they were having an affair were not true,’’ writes Savva, a columnist with The Australian. “Abbott did not get angry when Connie confronted him about this most sensitive of matters. He did not remonstrate, or raise his voice. He simply, calmly, denied it.’’

The closeness of the working relationship also raised eyebrows among Mr Abbott’s parliamentary colleagues, including an “awkward’’ incident where Ms Credlin fed the then prime minister food from her plate with her own fork in a restaurant.

One unnamed Liberal MP has told Savva he and his staffer were invited to dine with the pair at one of their favourite Italian restaurants in Melbourne’s Little Collins Street.

“What happened made the staffer sit bolt upright, then shift back in his seat,” Savva writes in the book.

“To their dismay, they watched Credlin feed Abbott – who had a voracious appetite, and had already polished off his main course – mouthfuls of food from her plate with her fork.’’

A couple of other diners sitting nearby witnessed the spectacle.

“As the meal was ending, she put her head on his shoulder to complain about being tired, to which Abbott said they must go soon,’’ the book says.

Asked by Savva what he was thinking at the time, the MP is quoted as saying: “I have only ever done that with my partner or a date.’’

Abbott and Credlin

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The book is being released as leadership tensions between Mr Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull resurface and threaten to weigh down the government’s election-year preparations.

Divisions have emerged over national security policies as well as economic priorities, with Mr Abbott urging a return to greater spending restraint. The revelations will refocus attentio­n on Mr Abbott’s political shortcomings and are expected to reopen wounds from the leadership brawl.

The book details how Barnaby Joyce, now Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader, warned Mr Abbott a month before he lost the leadership that Mr Turnbull was preparing to mount a coup. Mr Abbott changed the subject.

And it has been revealed that Mr Joyce was girding himself to tap Mr Abbott on the shoulder by Christmas last year if he was still floundering as prime minister. He was prepared to urge him to “do the decent thing’’ and step down.

The Road to Ruin explores the downfall of the Abbott government and delves into the complex relationship between the former­ prime minister and his chief of staff. One long-time Coalition staffer, who is unnamed, describes Ms Credlin as “his Wallis Simpson’’, referring to the American socialite for whom King Edward VIII abdic­ated to marry.

“This was not meant to imply an affair,’’ Savva writes, “it was meant to describe the depth of the depend­ence, the consuming obsess­ion, and what Abbott was prepared to sacrifice for it.’’

The book revives complaints that Mr Abbott failed to respond to red flags about the government’s performance, and ignored advice that his relationship with Ms Credlin was tearing at his prime ministership and cutting him off from colleagues.

Frontbencher Peter Dutton urged him to remove Joe Hockey from the economic team and replace him with Mr Turnbull. John Howard, his political mentor, was ignored when he advised against reintroducing knights and dames, suggested he appoint Mr Turnbull as treasurer, and warned him “about delegating too much of his authority to his chief of staff’’.

Mr Abbott has maintained a strong defence of Ms Credlin, whom he credits as pivotal to the Coal­ition’s election victory in 2013. Critics argue that his loyalty to Ms Credlin at the expense of elected MPs was a political blind spot that created a deep schism.

In her first public appearance after the leadership change, Ms Credlin told an Australian Women’s Weekly event she refused to let “insider gossip’’ and unnamed sources define her. She said if she were male, “I wouldn’t be bossy, I would be strong’’.

After Mr Abbott was dumped as leader, Senator Fierravanti-Wells was accused of throwing him under a bus when she publicly took issue with his views on Islam. Some viewed it as an attempt by the conservative to win over the moderate Mr Turnbull to protect her own preselection. She was promoted in Mr Turnbull’s February reshuffle to become the Minister for International Development and the Pacific.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells on Saturday backed her version of events related in the book, saying: “I put certain comments on the record and, as quoted, they are correct.’’

Arriving home at Sydney Airport earlier on Saturday, Mr Abbott told reporters: “Look I’m not going to rake over old coals. I’m not going to dwell on the past.’’

In The Road to Ruin, Savva details how Senator Fierravanti-Wells confronted Mr Abbott in his office about 10 o’clock on the night before he survived a “near-death experience’’ vote on a leadership spill on February 9 last year.

“She was brutally frank with him, raising something few people would dare broach, but which only a woman who had known him a long time could, while hoping he would appreciate she had his best interests at heart,’’ the extracts say.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, the senior NSW right-winger who had missed out on the ministry, believed Mr Abbott needed to hear, unfiltered, what his colleagues were thinking. They wanted Ms Credlin removed because many blamed her for the government’s wobbles and resented her treatment of them. They blamed Ms Credlin for isolating Mr Abbott. “Connie told him, without mincing words, that they were prepared to take it out on him, because they did not like her,’’ she writes.

After the February vote, in which 39 MPs voted against Mr Abbott despite there being no declared­ challenger, he began reaching out to backbenchers and recalibrating policy. But his chief of staff remained.

Days after the vote, Ms Credlin, who also denied the rumours, visit­ed Senator Fierravanti-Wells.

“Credlin said she believed that she was vitally important to Tony, that without her he would not be able to do his job. She believed Tony’s enemies were trying to get him through her,’’ Savva writes.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, the book says, told Ms Credlin: “One day, Tony will be sitting on a park bench in Manly feeding the pigeons­, and he will blame you.’’

Last week, Mr Abbott launched a 4000-word defence of his prime ministership, repudiating the thesis­ Mr Turnbull used for his challenge: the absence of an economic narrative.

A month before he was toppled, it has emerged, Mr Joyce pulled Mr Abbott aside to warn him he suspected “moves afoot’’ to unseat him. The book says Mr Joyce had picked up on the signs of plotting, including unusual groupings at dinner and embarrassed looks. Mr Joyce said he believed Mr Abbott would face a challenge from Mr Turnbull around the time of the Canning by-election in Western Australia. It was prescient.

“Abbott neither responded to Joyce’s warning nor engaged with him about it. He simply changed the subject,’’ Savva writes.

Outbursts and meltdowns by Ms Credlin – which often distracted Mr Abbott as he tried to placate her - are also detailed in the highly anticipated book, which is expected to ricochet across the political landscape.

In one incident, the former prime minister and Ms Credlin kept Indonesian authorities waiting after she was upset at being squeezed out of a high-level meeting to restore Australia’s bilateral relationship with Indonesia because of space restrictions.

Ms Credlin “took off in a huff’’, the book says.

Jane McMillan, who was the director of Mr Abbott’s press office during the first year of government, has thrown back the curtain on the incident.

Ms Credlin’s ire was raised during a critical international meeting between Mr Abbott and then Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Batam in early June 2014.

The meeting between Mr Abbott and Dr Yudhoyono had been designed to restore the bilateral relationship between Canberra and Jakarta and came against the backdrop of the espionage controversy that had been clouding the relationship as well as consternation over asylum-seeker boat turn-backs.

Savva writes there was only enough room in the bilateral meeting for Australia’s then ambassador to Indonesia Greg Moriarty and a note-taker.

Mr Abbott decided his national security adviser, Andrew Shearer, should sit in as the note taker.

After the meeting ended, Ms Credlin was “conspicuously absent’’ from the briefing before the leaders’ joint press statements.

“Those who were there say Abbott was completely distracted from the job at hand, because he was so concerned about Credlin and whether she was OK,’’ Savva writes.

McMillan told the book: “I remember thinking how indulgent, irresponsible, and arrogant it was to hold everyone hostage to her mood, even on Batam Island in Indonesia.

“This wasn’t just some press statement; at the time, it was the press statement’’.

After they returned to hotel for what was intended to be a brief pit stop before heading for the plane, Mr Abbott and Ms Credlin went into an anteroom to “have it out’’ while everyone, including the Indonesian authorities, waited, the book says.

McMillan opened the door and told them the whole entourage was waiting. Abbott called her in and “insisted on a group hug’’.

UPDATE: Ms Credlin has dismissed Savva’s book, saying the author did not contact her or Mr Abbott to fact-check the claims.

“After 16 years in politics, I’ve always made it my practice not to comment on gossip or stories from unnamed sources,’’ Ms Credlin has told The Sunday Telegraph.

“Sadly, modern politics is full of both. So I’m hardly going to change this practice especially when the so-called journalist didn’t make any effort to contact me. This book says a lot more about her lack of ethics than it will ever say about me.”

Ms Credlin has also dismissed as “laughable’’ and “offensive’’ claims in the book from an unnamed MP that she had fed Mr Abbott from her own plate, using her fork, in an Italian restaurant in Melbourne.

Mr Abbott said neither he nor his office was not contacted about the claims. “I’m not going to rake over old coals and I don’t respond to scurrilous gossip,’’ he said.

Savva, speaking on the ABC’s Insiders program today, confirmed she had not contacted Ms Credlin or Mr Abbott to put the allegations directly to them for the book.

“What I decided was that Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin, any day, any night can get out there and give their version of events,” she said. “And their version of events often differs very wildly from everybody else’s and there are people who had been abused for years during that administration who suffered in silence.

“And I thought they should be given the chance to tell their story and that’s what I tried to do and they’ve very bravely gone on the record, so many of them, to explain what happened.’’

UPDATE 2: Asked whether the publication of Savva’s book tomorrow would inflame tensions within the Liberals, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield said: “It’s inevitable when you have significant events in the life of the nation as occurred in September last year that there will be histories written, that there will be accounts of events that led to a change of prime minister.’’

Senator Fifield said it was “quite right that there is a public record of what led to such a significant change’’.

“I think all colleagues need quite frankly to take that in their stride,’’ Senator Fifield told the ABC’s Insiders program.

Senator Fifield was a member of the core group of plotters who backed Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership challenge in September.

He said people will want to have their views on the record. “The important thing is that there be respect for the views that people are presenting. I mean it’s just not real world to expect that there won’t be authoritative accounts of events as occurred in September.’’

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