On Thursday, Peta Credlin — former chief of staff to then prime minister Tony Abbott and current News Corp commentator — gave her response to the first episode of the ABC’s Nemesis, the three-part post-mortem on the Coalition governments between 2013 and 2022. In the absence on the show of her or Abbott (the first former PM to decline the ABC’s invitation to one of these retrospectives) came Credlin’s piece in The Australian, which recounted her time in government and modestly concludes:
Part of the reason you are reading me in The Australian today is that when the caricature of me was created by the plotters out to get Abbott, as a staffer I had no voice; I could not respond and all I could do was cop it. When that changed, I knew it would be near impossible to counter what had been manufactured and that my best response was to enter the public square and let people who had heard the criticisms take a closer look and make up their own minds. Having the top-rating show on Sky News for the past three years is my answer to ‘those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat’.
It also features the following striking claim:
It’s hardly surprising, given the nature of the program, that the ABC failed to put the record straight on a couple of key issues. The 2014 budget did not break election promises.
Let’s interrogate that. Did the 2014 budget keep its promises on:
The ABC and SBS: No.
Pensions: No.
On Medicare locals: Nope.
On personal tax: Not really.
On health and education: Depends who you ask.
Indigenous affairs: Not on your nelly.
Do any other broken election promises come to mind? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
This is about as long an article as this cretin deserves.
Yep, who gives a stuff. Either about Abbot or his concubine (no disrespect to her gender, I’d be more than happy were Tony a gay man in his budgie smugglers). The point is Credlin has been given public profile precisely because of the role she played in Abbot’s office, and the media at the time showed interest in her precisely because of the salacious details of her, um, arrangements with her boss. Why is it that salaciousness, innuendo and down-right fornication follows so many successful pollies? They’ve got power, they may have money but they’re unkind persons.
The moderator let the concubine comment through? Amazing.
I’m no fan of either Abbot or Credlin, but that remark / description of Ms Credlin’s role in the Abbott is unacceptable.
I had the misfortune to only have the Moloch papers on the table when I was waiting for my car to have a service yesterday. They are even more rubbishy than when I last ever looked at one. and of course there was an article by this person, banging on about anything they could find that Labor might have done. Even good Labor policy has to be attacked by this low-life.
Even? Especially.
What qualifies as a “top rating show” on Sky? (Other than personal attribution by the presenter of course)
A member of the public watches it.
I was thinking it’s the only place it would get that rating.
You bet you are, you bet I am.
When more than 5 people have are watching your show?
I just don’t understand how someone can lie so brazenly, and I mean that quite literally, it is something I just can’t comprehend the intellectual logistics of. Don’t get me wrong, everyone lies of course, but I am talking about the brazen, obvious, easily exposed lie told with total disinterest in the truth. I am sure it’s not exclusively the case, but the examples that come readily to mind are all fom the (far) Right.
Abbott seems to have lied when he felt cornered, but Scott Morrison deserves the gold medal:
https://uat.crikey.com.au/dossier-of-lies-and-falsehoods/
Is it really a “lie” if it punishes the enemies of the state? (“The state” meaning either the actual state, or my own self interest.) Or would-be enemies, or potential enemies, or people allied to potential enemies, or people associated with people allied to potential enemies? The walls are closing in! In that context, is anything really a “lie”?
You might gain some insight from Jonathan Swift’s essay The Art of Political Lying, published in 1710. It includes this:
There is one essential point wherein a political liar differs from others of the faculty, that he ought to have but a short memory, which is necessary, according to the various occasions he meets with every hour of differing from himself, and swearing to both sides of a contradiction, as he finds the persons disposed with whom he hath to deal. In describing the virtues and vices of mankind, it is convenient, upon every article, to have some eminent person in our eye, from whom we copy our description. I have strictly observed this rule, and my imagination this minute represents before me a certain great man famous for this talent, to the constant practice of which he owes his twenty years’ reputation of the most skillful head in England, for the management of nice affairs. The superiority of his genius consists in nothing else but an inexhaustible fund of political lies, which he plentifully distributes every minute he speaks, and by an unparalleled generosity forgets, and consequently contradicts, the next half hour. He never yet considered whether any proposition were true or false, but whether it were convenient for the present minute or company to affirm or deny it; so that if you think fit to refine upon him, by interpreting everything he says, as we do dreams, by the contrary, you are still to seek, and will find yourself equally deceived whether you believe or not: the only remedy is to suppose, that you have heard some inarticulate sounds, without any meaning at all […]
Some people may think, that such an accomplishment as this can be of no great use to the owner, or his party, after it has been often practiced, and is become notorious; but they are widely mistaken. Few lies carry the inventor’s mark, and the most prostitute enemy to truth may spread a thousand, without being known for the author: besides, as the vilest writer hath his readers, so the greatest liar hath his believers: and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work, and there is no further occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.
“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it”. So apt.
Her former boss or subordinate, has claimed support for Ukraine but in a far right ecosystem, not just Fox but also via a Hungarian (Koch Heritage linked) institute that is supported by PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban; has been noticed by ethical conservatives inc. Applebaum and Kristol (Twitter Dec ’23):
‘Heritage Foundation and Viktor Orbán are not simply against aid for Ukraine. They are against Ukraine. They hate Ukraine, because a) they’re pro-Putin, and b) they hate liberal democracy, especially one fighting to defend itself against a brutal dictator.’
Someone is in need of media scrutiny and interrogation, but not by Credlin on Sky ie. being platformed to claim Ukraine support, but no?
The obvious lies are so brazenly made, confident in the knowledge that they’ll be amplified by an army of supporters almost entirely unconcerned with the truth, but preoccupied with tribalism. It’s just empty noise to be echoed by authoritarian followers; the scourge of humanity who brought us the Holocaust.
After all the ‘Ju-liar” brouhaha they manufactured during her government, even standing in front of the “Ditch the W…” poster, they then lie their teeth out and expect to get away with it. The hypocrisy is breathtaking and unequalled.
Did they get away with anything? Abbott was tossed out by his own party just two years after he led them into government, and then in 2019, when a Liberal govt was returned, Abbott suffered the ignominy of being turfed out of his own blue ribbon seat. Abbott and Credlin are shameless to this day, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been shamed. Yes, they’ve got hides like rhinoceroses, but it doesn’t make them any the less risible or execrated by the many.
Yes that was wonderful. tossed out by his own constituents. Joined Stanley Melbourne Bruce and John Howard , even McMahon managed to hold on to his seat after leading his party to defeat in 1972. Abbott succeeded only in failing.
‘Having the top-rating show on Sky News for the past three years…’
Is that a boast or an apology?
Has anyone fact checked her claim? I suspect even that is a little unlikely…..
It probably is top-rating on Sky (and only Sky) Anywhere else it might have been axed for failed ratings in its first season
Most of the shows on SNAD would have long been gone if they were on a Mainstream Network Channel, for lack of Audience and Interest.