Annabel Crabb: "Another lesson on what it means to be a woman in high office."

Over her remarkable career Peta Credlin generally avoided the notorious lady-trap of calling out sexism in politics, but last night she just could not hold it in any more. Sound familiar? Annabel Crabb writes.

I didn’t have any firm expectations from my night out with Peta Credlin at the Women Of The Future Awards in Sydney last night, beyond a general and agreeable sense of intrigue.

But being papped like a sex offender with the lady in a shady-windowed perp van came as a complete surprise. I’m not going to lie.

Credlin agreed months ago to appear on a panel at the WOTF event, organised by the Australian Women’s Weekly, whose latest edition names her as Australia’s most influential woman in its annual power index.

Also invited was Jesinta Campbell, former Miss Universe Australia and most recently in the news as the supportive fiancée of stricken AFL star Buddy Franklin.

Both of them agreed to show up despite their current travails, which was fairly decent of them, not to mention very fortunate for the jammy buggers at The Weekly. Having similarly been asked several months ago to participate, I – for my part – spent a twitchy weekend wondering what personal calamity would befall me.

Anvils, however, having failed to fall on my head, I reported late in the afternoon for some light titivation (customary for such events, where everyone looks el glammo) in the company of Australia’s Most Notorious Woman.

And that, Your Honour, is how I came to be in a dark van with Peta Credlin hurtling towards the rear entrance of the NSW Art Gallery, within whose treasure-encrusted walls lurked everyone from Quentin Bryce to Turia Pitt, plus about forty photographers (which is why we headed for the back door).

Like I said, it was decent of Credlin to show. Many in her position would have opted for the sensible alternative; a night of gin and tears on the sofa with the second series of Breaking Bad, under a light dusting of potato-chip crumbs. (Honouring awkward prior arrangements must be something that runs in the Abbott circle; I remember when Credlin’s boss was elected to the Liberal leadership by one vote in 2009, one of the first things he did was honour a prior engagement to launch a book by Labor mascot Bob Ellis, whom of course Mr Abbott had successfully sued for defamation a decade earlier. To everyone’s surprise including the author’s, he showed up.)

But I did learn some new things about the art of photo-evasion.

First: If you’re planning to enter a property discreetly by the rear gate, check that there aren’t already photographers there too.

Second: The whole operation will go a lot more smoothly if the gate in question isn’t padlocked.

Having somehow missed these two KPIs, our car wound up nosed against a locked gate while several snappers descended and did that thing of pressing the cameras against the windows and blasting away.

And here’s another thing I found out. When you’re in a tinted van with popping flashbulbs outside, a sense of criminality arrives immediately with its bags and sets up camp with you in the car. Isn’t that interesting? I’ve always looked at those shots of cringing perps, of disgraced businessmen or recently-dispatched political leaders escaping in their cars and thought: Well, old China, you look guilty as hell.

But it turns out that looking guilty is all part of the package.

Heroically, I mashed down my two most immediate instincts, which were to jump into Credlin’s arms, or to cover my face with the Women’s Weekly bag that was at our feet. I think, in retrospect, this worked out well for both of us.

Credlin’s mood, at this point, I would describe as “crisp disapproval”. She didn’t lose it, but there were some mutterings about efficient advance work. No-one could find the key to the gate. So we sat there, Credlin gazing stoically ahead, me sneaking glances at her while chanting silently to myself “Don’t do anything interesting with your face. Don’t do anything interesting with your face.”

In the resultant photos, I look exactly like a mid-level accounts manager who’s just copped five to seven for putting a slice of payroll through the pokies. Credlin looks like Boadicea riding into battle, which is why she is camera catnip.

This is the thing about Peta Credlin. She is magnetic, both to the eye and to human opinion.

Once we reached the event, she told host Helen McCabe that she was not anxious to speak about the events of the week. But what poured forth – with a fierce lucidity, as soon as she was called upon to speak – was a combative first draft of her own history.

“I refuse to be defined by insider gossip from unnamed sources where no-one has the guts to put their name to it,” she said, of her reputation for bossiness and bullying.

“If you’re a cabinet minister or a journalist and you’re intimidated by the chief of staff to the prime minister, maybe you don’t deserve your job.”

She elaborated:

“If I was a guy I wouldn’t be bossy, I’d be strong. If I was a guy I wouldn’t be a micromanager, I’d be across my brief, or across the detail. If I wasn’t strong, determined, controlling (and got them into government from opposition I might add), then I would be weak and not up to it and should have to go and could be replaced.

So, it’s very binary when it comes to women.”

Modern technology has not yet reached the state where we could hear – in real time – the gasps and shrieks that must have been emitted in certain ministerial and backbench offices around the nation as Peta Credlin outlined her views on “overt and covert” sexism in politics (“It’s the covert that’s really hard. The covert is groups of men at the end of the day just finding themselves together to go for dinner and not thinking to ask anyone else), and then built to an oratory crescendo – a forceful feminist alarum:

“You will want to have women like me in politics. You will want to have women like me sitting in power… you want women in places where they can make a difference, because half the policy in this country is for us, but only about a tenth of it is by us.

And if we do not stand up and put women in the epicentre of decision-making, whether it’s boardrooms, government boards, politics, cabinet rooms, wherever, if you don’t have women there, we will not exist.”

Those office splutterers will have much to say about this speech, beginning with the observation that the representation of women in Cabinet dipped by 83 per cent when Peta Credlin walked into the Prime Minister’s Office as chief of staff, and increased by 250 per cent when she left it. Like I said, this is a first draft of her own history, to which she is entitled.

But as she spoke last night, a powerful, cogent, controversial woman who has worked like a bastard for many years to get to the top of an inhospitable system, a flawed and complicated woman who generally over her career avoided the notorious lady-trap of calling out sexism in politics but on this occasion just could not hold it in any more so out it came in a fierce torrent, point after point after point, I couldn’t help but think of another speech, from another woman, in another place.

Neither would enjoy the comparison, I’ll bet.

But this young nation of ours has seen just one female prime minister. Of 50 prime ministerial chiefs of staff – as Credlin informed the crowd last night – just three have been female: “And at two years, I’m the longest-serving.”

So perhaps given the exclusivity of the club to which they both belong, it is on this occasion forgivable for me – as Peta Credlin walks out the door into territory unknown – to recall Julia Gillard’s own parting remarks, on what it means to be a woman serving in such an office:

“It doesn’t explain everything, it doesn’t explain nothing, it explains some things. And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey.

What I am absolutely confident of is it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that.”

Annabel Crabb is the ABC’s chief online political writer. She tweets at @annabelcrabb.

This post originally appeared on ABC’s The Drum. 

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