“It’s been tough on my mum.”
It’s been a rough week for Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott’s “controversial” Chief Of Staff. Forced out of office by the now-familiar machinations of a government coup, you could forgive her for wanting to stay home on the lounge for… well, more than seven nights.
But a deal’s a deal, and Credlin didn’t pike on Helen McCabe and the Australian Women’s Weekly Women Of The Future Awards last night at the Art Gallery of NSW.
She turned up, she smiled for photos and then she sat on a panel with Annabel Crabb and Jesinta Campbell to talk about… well, women.
Peta Credlin didn’t mince her words about the “bloody tough” experience of being a senior female in Australian politics. “If you’re a cabinet minister or a journalist and you’re intimidated by the chief-of-staff of the prime minister then maybe you don’t deserve your job,” Credlin told the room.
She also spoke openly about her attempts to conceive through IVF.
“I thought it would all come together like everything else in my life would come together – and it didn’t come together. And one of the reasons I spoke out about IVF was I felt really strongly about it because I battled with IVF for three years – in one of the toughest jobs in this country. Everyone I ever talked about IVF had a baby and it had all been okay so I suddenly thought “is something wrong with me?” and “how do you keep going with this load? And there was a bit of talk in Canberra that I was doing an IVF and there was all the insider gossip that meant someone would get my job. So I decided just to be out there about it and I was – pretty tough but criticised for talking about stuff that’s personal. But I wanted to be the voice, at least a little part for the woman who aren’t successful.”
Credlin admitted that in her 16 years in politics, she had encountered both covert and overt sexism, but she thought it was absolutely essential that women keep pushing through prejudice to positions of power.
Despite insisting that, “I’m not going to run for politics. I’m not… I want to move on with my life and do something where I get my own voice,” Credlin made it sound very much as if she wasn’t done.
“You will want to have women like me in politics,” she told McCabe. “You want women in places they can make a difference. Because half of the policies are made for us, but only about 10 per cent is by us.
Top Comments
Peta Credlin is a hypocrite. You reap what you sow.
'if she was a man she would be strong not bossy'
I take issue with this, it's such a catch all for bad behaviour. If you're a vindictive, micro-managing and over-controlling male manager, then you'd be called an '*rsehole', not strong.
I don't know for a fact that Peta's management style has the above characteristics, but we're hearing it from so many quarters, it seems likely.
After the spill, both Peta's and Tony's statements, have shared a salient characteristic; externalisation of blame. The media, leaks, individual MPs etc, when in reality, it was:
1. Their retrogressive and unfair policies, manifested in an unmarketable budget.
2. Their ostracism of centrist LNP colleagues.
3. Their repeated PR tactics of creating racial enemies to smokescreen woeful domestic performance. Got so old and transparent.
4. Their alienation of women voters.
5. Their inability to secure the passage of their proposals through the Senate.
6. Their overstepping of their vested authority/mandate in the form of TA's captain's calls and PC's use of her authority to exceed that of elected officials'.
This self-belief in their 'anointment' as the best thing for this country since sliced bread saw their little team through tough times, but rendered them deaf to voices to whom they needed to listen.
Exactly, Kevin Rudd was referred to as a "mircomanager", "egomaniac", "bully" and "control freak" by members of his party. Whilst Julia Gillard faced name calling and criticism from the opposition, no one in her own party took issues with her leadership style.
I'm a while, middle-aged man and I have worked with a controlling man who refused to listen to common-sense arguments or take advice from anyone. It was "his way or the highway". I definitely never referred to him as strong. In fact, I reserved a term for him that I almost never use in any other situation.