Sexism isn't responsible for Peta Credlin's own failures

Extract from ABC The Drum

Opinion

By Barrie Cassidy

Updated about an hour ago

Photo: 'Peta Credlin's clout from an unelected position was almost unprecedented.' (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Few women in public life would not be subject to sexism. But it is also possible for women - just like men - to be the architects of their own downfall. And when that is demonstrably the case, it cheapens the principle of gender equality to play that card so casually, writes Barrie Cassidy.

Undoubtedly Tony Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin, would at times have been the victim of sexism. Most women have been.
As a woman you would have to work alone in a lighthouse not to be exposed to men who will never get gender balance.
"If I was a guy I wouldn't be bossy, I would be strong," she said this week. "If I was a guy I wouldn't be a micro manager, I would be across my brief or across the detail."
True enough.
But it is also possible for women - just like men - to be the architects of their own downfall, and when that is demonstrably the case, it cheapens the principle of gender equality to play that card so casually.
It makes it harder for women genuinely aggrieved to be heard.
Credlin was a control freak who was given that control by the prime minister. Her clout from an unelected position was almost unprecedented.
To that she says, "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."
No. She was - along with the prime minister himself - replaced in part because she was too controlling. And that would have been the case no matter whether a man or woman had played it so badly.
It was her failure to conciliate, to reach out and to build bridges with the front and back bench and the public service that led to the February spill. Because both Credlin and Abbott seemed blind to that reality, even after February, the tensions never went away.
Credlin was the power behind the Abbott throne, but the record will show she reigned in government for less than a full term. Her boss lost his job after just two years, the first Liberal prime minister since John Gorton to be cut down by his own party.
That is surely in anybody's judgment a fail with a capital F.
That she was singularly powerful is not disputed.
She even made the claim that she "got them into government".
That's a nonsense of course. Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and the Labor Party did that pretty much on their own after years of dysfunctional government and internal infighting. And a few other people on the conservative side of politics played important parts as well.
But because she believes that to be true - that such is her power and influence - then equally she must take responsibility for the spectacular undoing of the prime minister; for the knighthoods, the appalling slogans, the negativity, the failure to make the transition from opposition to government, the dysfunction and the internal angst.
Credlin also argued, "If you are a cabinet minister or a journalist and you are intimidated by the chief of staff of the prime minister, well maybe you don't deserve your job."
That ignores the strength of the intimidation, coming as it did with the authority of the PM.
Ministers, let alone staffers, reasonably feared retribution. And political journalists, being political journalists, feared being cut off from information.
Credlin further argued:

You will want to have women like me in politics. You will want to have women like me sitting in seats of authority and power... You want women in places where they can make a difference, because half the policy of 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.

Yet, as Liberal MP Sharman Stone pointed out this week, while Credlin seemed "distressed that there weren't enough women about", she "was the gatekeeper for Tony Abbott. She was his most influential and indispensible rock and during that time we only had two women in cabinet and they sure as hell didn't have the finance portfolios."
One former Abbott government ministerial adviser told me this week that Credlin's major failing was "an obsessive insistence on micro-management".
He said:

There was almost zero delegation of authority to ministers and even the most inconsequential decisions required direct sign off by the PMO.
The inevitable result of this over-centralisation of power was a massive logjam in the decision making process.

He argued the long delays frustrated the public and that placed unnecessary political pressure on the government.
Then, as a result of that pressure, "the PMO would make decisions on-the-fly that were mind-bogglingly stupid; a case in point that imbecilic plan announced in August to deploy Border Force officers on the streets of Melbourne."
Therein lies the poison at the heart of the Abbott government - and the Rudd government before it. Why did those two leaders fall in their first term? What was the common thread?
Both eschewed the time-honoured practice of having seasoned public servants as chiefs of staff. And Both Rudd and Abbott gave their political staff clout and authority over ministers that they should never have had.
Bob Hawke succeeded in part because all of his chiefs of staff, from Graham Evans to Chris Conybeare to Sandy Hollway and ultimately Dennis Richardson, were very senior public servants - the best in the business.
They intimately understood how the system worked. They showed respect for others and appreciated ideas wherever they came from. Paul Keating continued the tradition with Don Russell. John Howard had a treasury official, Arthur Sinodinos, as his chief of staff for almost a decade. They were successful and productive years. Sinodinos worked hand in glove with the political operator, Grahame Morris. However, the two roles were separate. Politics did not drive the process. The very concept of handing the responsibility of the chief of staff to public servants sent a signal that good governance and sound process was at the heart of the operation.
On a daily basis at least, the politics was secondary. And so, by extension, was the media strategy around it.
The chief of staff knew when to be absent from political discussions. Usually that pertained in any case to internal party matters.
Abbott, by comparison, praised Credlin as the "fiercest political warrior". Andrew Podger, a professor of public policy at ANU, wrote in the Australian Financial Review on Thursday: "This is not a healthy attribute in any chief of staff, let alone the PM's."
Podger referred to Allan Behm's recent book, No Minister, about the role of a chief of staff:

Behm, a former senior public servant himself, makes clear that the chief of staff is not the boss - the minister is – and unelected ministerial staff must show respect for all elected members of parliament. The PM's chief of staff in particular should be out of the limelight and working with ministers and backbenchers as a respectful facilitator of communication with the PM.

Rudd's senior advisers - and much later, Credlin - didn't do that. Power went to their heads. They ostracised senior ministers and so in the end both their governments paid a heavy price for that. When will they learn?
Perhaps Malcolm Turnbull will. His temporary chief of staff is a departmental head. He would be wise to make that a permanent arrangement, whoever gets the job.
There is a place for the politics; and a place for process. The two are not mutually exclusive. "Political warriors", however, never seem to see that. Whether they're men or women.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. He writes a weekly column for The Drum.