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She fed him tenderly, as if he were a baby bird

In Nikki Savva’s EXPLOSIVE NEW BOOK the author describes a dinner at which then Prime Minister Tony Abbott was observed being fed food from a fork by his then chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Ms Credlin, it’s reported, took the food from her own plate.

Obviously the two of them had a pretty interesting thing going, though it would be more interesting if she’d fed him with her fingers rather than a fork, and then let him suck them.

I’m not doing any in-depth blah de blah about this latest bit of culinary codswallop because I can’t be arsed.

In a week in which Donald Trump told the world he has a GREAT BIG WILLY BIGGER EVEN THAN HIS HAIR, it seems fitting that the next piece of news was Peta and Tony’s food sex, closely followed by the information that Rupert Murdoch married Jerry Hall in London. Let’s hope his wedding night taxes his strength, which will be the only form of taxing Rupert’s experienced in a while.

I’m imagining now a situation in which the LNP loses the coming election, dumps Malcolm, reinstates Tony and Peta and we have the deja vu thingy all over again.

Here is some gratuitous advice for the failed Prime Minister’s wife, Mrs Margaret Abbott, as gleaned from Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry:

When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me.

I considered my choices.

I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated.

I could leave and be unhappy and dignified.

I could beg him to touch me again.

I could live in hope and die in bitterness

I took some things and left. It wasn’t easy, it was my home too.

There’s a lesson in that for all of us.

This article was originally published on No Place For Sheep.

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40 comments

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  1. Peter Ball

    of course they were having an affair , I fell sorry for Abbott’s wife

  2. John Kelly

    Well, well, well.

  3. Backyard Bob

    I’m not doing any in-depth blah de blah about this latest bit of culinary codswallop because I can’t be arsed.

    It would have been better if you declined because you felt it was beneath you.

  4. brickbob

    Fancy a good god fearing christian man like Abbott cheating on his wife,who would have thunk it, does this mean he will have to pay his mentor and confessor George Pell a visit to seek absolution for his sins?

  5. Taswegian

    I have always thought it highly improbable that Tony Abbott could maintain a mad monk’s celibate lifestyle in Canberra whilst Margie continued her life in Sydney. Clearly the boundaries in this professional relationship with his chief of staff were a bit blurry. Many might say none of this is the public’s business, but the sheer hypocrisy of this man, Prime Minister for two years, imposing his will upon an entire nation for that time, is something to behold. Peta Credlin maintained a very tight control over who gained access to the boss, and that does have some very serious implications for national security and public discourse. For this reason, it is imperative that full details of this relationship are placed in the public arena for all Australians to digest in their own time.

  6. lawrencewinder

    That this mongrel ruling rabble are as tawdry to each other as they are the country should surprise no-one.

  7. Garth

    Backyard Bob, it’s sometimes hard to discern sarcasm/ irony through comments – was that last one serious or a dig?

  8. cornlegend

    Backyard Bob
    “Everyone knows it.”

    I didn’t, don’t think so, but all the more , don’t care .
    You sounded more like a Larry Pickering or Michael Smith

  9. terry

    more like bill Clinton

  10. Wally

    So we can assume that Tony Abbott had a great personal assistant, she looked after all of his needs.

    Could be said that Credlin is a bit like a one stop shop.

  11. Michael Taylor

    I didn’t, and I don’t think so either.

    I’m with you on that one, Cornie.

  12. gangey1959

    Now that he doesn’t have the top job, and if he hasn’t been playing by the rules and Margie decides he should piss off, do you reckon he’ll have to pay his daughter’s school fees this year, or will she get another scholarship? She didn’t make the “New and Emerging Talent” show at the Melbourne Town Hall Fashion week last year…..

  13. Matters Not

    would have been better if you declined because you felt it was beneath you

    Possibly. But if Abbott ‘runs’, ‘advocates’, ‘advances’ or whatever down the deontological ethics track and is seen to deviate from same, then the charge of ‘hypocrisy’ and its political consequences seem somewhat ‘appropriate’, fair and just if you like.

    Let’s not try to be too pure here, particularly when Abbott has been in receipt of so much latitude over a long period of time.

  14. kerri

    As delicious as the scandal may be, nothing would make me contribute to the retirement of this nasty hypocritical and opportunistic “journalist”.
    Backyard Bob what a gullible vindictive thought?
    My hairdresser is male and most definitely not a “raging poof”. Open your mind and start living in the 21st century.

  15. Michael Taylor

    At the decision of the site owners, Backyard Bob’s comment has been deleted due to its homophobic connotations and potentially defamatory content.

  16. Garth

    Thanks Michael. I read Backyard Bob’s comment and had started to type out a long spiel as to the fact that I didn’t know it, in any case it was irrelevant, and a long bit on the hypocrisy of the coalition on such matters (as well as a rant on the language used in the post). I deleted it all because I thought it may have just been a dig (hence my last comment). You would clearly know, based on his/her previous comments, whether it was tongue in cheek or serious so now I regret not posting my original response.

  17. Matters Not

    In my view (the meaning I give) ByB was simply ‘taking the piss’.

    He’s like that. And very good at it. Ought to be congratulated and all that.

    Feel confident he’s not likely to become a Bighead.

    Please.

  18. Michael Taylor

    MN, taking the piss or not, the owners of this site really don’t feel like getting sued. It’s that simple. End of story.

  19. Garth

    PS. I know it can never be an easy decision to delete a comment for a site such as IA that aims to show it is an open and honest forum for factual journalism and public feedback (which I have always found it to be) but if that comment was meant honestly by the poster, then I can only agree with the outcome. The comment added nothing to the debate/discussion, and was simply a small mind throwing mud.

  20. Michael Taylor

    No, it’s not easy, Garth, and it is usually just done on the quiet. But we felt an explanation was required, otherwise we would see such comments repeated.

  21. Matters Not

    was simply a small mind throwing mud

    Don’t think so, Certainly not a small mind. The evidence abounds. But you have to be mentally equipped to recognise same.

    But I am not ‘legally’ responsible.

  22. Garth

    Last comment on this but thank you Michael and IA. You have only lifted my respect for IA.

  23. Michael Taylor

    Thanks Garth. But we’re The AIMN, not IA (Independent Australia). ?

  24. Garth

    OK, so not quite the last comment from me. MN, I have read your comments for some time with interest and you often get me thinking – both I appreciate. My comments were based on the assumption that BBs comment was serious (hence my first response). If it was facetious then it needed some elaboration as I just wasn’t sure. I try to give everyone respect but it’s hard when something is, on face value, so objectionable.

  25. Garth

    Sorry Michael,. Flipping between two of my favourite sites 🙂

  26. Michael Taylor

    Garth, you’re forgiven. ?

  27. Wally

    Backyard Bob

    You are old enough to know that the world no longer has a sense of humour, that is not Michaels fault.

  28. paul walter

    I am waiting with bated breath for a great big fat column about Abbott and Pell from Miranda Devine.

    It’s not that Abbott is not as ugly as Savva appears to have painted him, but that so many people lurking in the back ground are just as ugly inside. Savva turned me off years ago and then there are the stringpullers in the back ground conducting the Turnbull/ Abbott fued for their own shadowy motives.

    As for Margie, she supported him so she will have to wear any regrets for any costs personal or otherwise, as well as any blessings.

  29. Salstarat

    The long running affair between the vile harridan Credlin and the bible thumping nauseating hypocritical fascist, Abbott has been common knowledge throughout parliament for years!

  30. Mercurial

    Abbott was Credlin’s source of power; she treated him like the little kid he really was. You don’t think for one minute she’d be interested in having it off with him, do you? It would have been way below her to abuse the pathway to power that Abbott represented.

    Unless you subscribe to the femme fatale notion, that is…

    All the rhetoric about an affair is just that; some people just can’t resist the idea, just because their gender is opposite. Think about Abbott standing in front of those ‘Ditch the Witch’ signs; are your inferences about Credlin any better than those made at the time about Gillard?

  31. Mercurial

    and, damnit, I missed the homophobic comment…

  32. Michael Taylor

    Salstarat, the rumours had been circulating in Canberra for a number of years, and it wasn’t until the 2013 election campaign that it became apparent who the rumours were about. A high ranking public servant told me that the Press Gallery had a bit more knowledge of Abbott’s private life than they were letting on. There were not only rumours that Abbott was having an affair, but also rumours about Abbott’s marriage. There was a whisper going around town that Margy spent three weeks at a women’s shelter for three weeks over Xmas in 2012. What helped fuel these rumours was Abbott’s three months of living out of hotels/motels a fair bit of the time.

    Still, they were only rumours. Maybe one day we’ll all find out. But by then I guess no one will care. I think we’d all prefer that Abbott became irrelevant over the passage of time.

  33. Jennifer Wilson

    Backyard Bob, someone in my household just made that observation as well. But the truth is, I couldn’t even be arsed considering whether or not the topic was beneath my dignity. 🙂

  34. Sally K

    Nikki Savva has been very smart to include implications of an Abbott Credlin affair in her book. True or not it will be the human interest factor that will much increase sales. Political biographies and memoirs are usually dry subjects that attract a limited readership in a nation that takes little interest in what actually happens in politics beyond MSM headlines and propaganda.

  35. Sen Nearly Ile

    Margie Aitken, seems to fit the description of the clever woman playing dumb for her man.
    The rabbott’s lacking of understanding is typified by his 2010 giggle “I’ll give up sex for lent”.
    This discounts any value she had to him but I expect, judging by his past, she was merely another box to tick!
    is it possible the rabbott knocked back nikki as the source of advice/comfort? I can’t remember a person on insiders, including such apologists as bolt, roundface and sadsack, so positive, so protective and so forgiving of the rabbott as savva????
    As for credlin, by the rabbott’s adoration she was a mother substitute.
    If there were anything more, multiple confessions would have been essential and major penitence would have been imposed.
    ps perhaps the measure of the ignorance in the man was displayed by his brushing fluff from the shoulders of morrison just before the putsch!

  36. Philip

    Mr. Abbott has for many years cast himself as the strict Catholic, and upholder of strict moral and traditional “family values”. In the process he has put himself and those like him on a pedestal. He has been very vocal in his opinions on anyone who did not fit his narrow view of what is “good”, and “normal”, and has taken a special interest in condemning on the LGBTI Community and granting the likes of Cory Bernardi and the ACL a bigger platform than they warrant. Abbott has put himself in this ivory tower; If he has committed infidelity with Credlin, then they deserve what they are getting and are both fair game. If Mrs. Abbott knew, stayed silent, and stayed, then she is a fool and I have no sympathy for her. She deserves the vile man she married.

  37. Backyard Bob

    Just for the sake of clarity, and I’ll be about as charitable as I can manage – my deleted post was neither homophobic nor defamatory – the latter claim being laughably inane and merely an excuse. I was pointing out the utter hypocrisy of this commentary in the face of what Gillard copped over her partner and their relationship. I’m gobsmacked that it went sailing over all but one poster’s head. Maybe politics makes people get stuck in some weird form of comprehension literalism. Whatever.

  38. Sassy

    Sounds like they were having an affair even if they didn’t have physical sex. Though it sounds like they were getting off in their relationship. Credlin sounds like a masterful puppeteer.

  39. Wally

    “Credlin sounds like a masterful puppeteer”

    A really dumb puppet makes any puppeteer look good.

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