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She was constantly attacked in the media, which was fed damaging stories by disgruntled Coalition MPs right until Tony Abbott was replaced on September 14.
Peta Credlin, the prime minister’s chief of staff, became one of the public symbols of the Abbott government’s failure. Abbott, accusing her critics of sexism, resolutely defended her in public and in private.
Most MPs weren’t close enough to to raise such a personal topic as his principal adviser with Abbott.
But a few select people who had known Abbott longer than Credlin urged him to remove her before the vote on his leadership on February 9, 2015, that brought a lot of government’s internal tensions into the open. They were personally loyal to Abbott, unlike some of the MPs leaking damaging information about Credlin, and argued that she was contributing to the failure of his government.
Some had found their access to Abbott reduced by Credlin, who jealously guarded her control over his schedule.
In January, two weeks before several Liberal MPs would trigger a vote on the party leadership, and before his resignation threat appeared in the papers, Liberal Party treasurer Philip Higginson put in writing what many Liberals wanted to say but were afraid to.
“Hi Tony, I suspect you’re not going to appreciate this but the boil must be lanced. She is a dark solitary person who has zero people skills and therefore zero judgment on people. You need to dismiss her immediately. I’m happy to have a person to person with you on a number of improvement matters, but [she is] primarily the root cause of your problems.
“Sorry to perhaps disappointment [sic] you mate. Phil”
Mr Abbott replied: “You’re entitled to your judgment Phil but I don’t share it. Cheers Tony.”
Higginson had known Abbott since the early 1990s and had taken up the unpaid party job in 2011 in part to help his old friend.
A few months into the position, Abbott introduced Higginson to Credlin in the coffee lounge of the Westin Hotel in Sydney. Abbott told Higginson there were two people he had to impress in the job: Credlin and Brian Loughnane, the Liberal Party federal director and her husband. Higginson didn’t then know that Credlin and Loughnane were married.
Later, Higginson would state that Credlin once confided in him that she was envious of people who had known Abbott longer than she.
When he asked Credlin in an email to set aside time for Abbott to meet an important donor, she brusquely told him to go through Loughnane. Higginson felt Credlin and Loughnane were freezing other people out, creating a climate of fear and mistrust across the party and government.
A former Sydney MP turned television commentator, Ross Cameron, had been described by Abbott as his best friend in politics. He was the only person close to Abbott to publicly call for the party to switch to Malcolm Turnbull, a decision that cost him friendships and caused him physical pain.
