Or why it's dangerous to play with reptiles Peta ...

The front page said it all, really ...

And naturally the follow-up in the digital revolving splash of doom was equally hard-hitting ...

Oops, wouldn't you know it, the pond snapped the wrong panel on the wheel of doom ...

There, that's better.

Now on this day of days, the pond is of course deeply concerned at the treatment of women in politics ...

After all ...

But this isn't how you go about defending your legacy ...

The pond had an immediate problem with that "now", which suggested a profound lack of historical awareness.

Politics has always been unsourced gossip, long before the virulent, wonderful unsourced gossip that saturated the coffee houses of England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Greg Hunt The Spectator and the more gossipy The Tatler via coffeehouses here).

Meanwhile, everybody from John Hewson to Lara Tingle have been racing around to note that it was Tony Abbott who was in charge and it was Tony Abbott who is ultimately responsible and who should be ultimately judged ...

Indeed, indeed, and it is fair to say that there's no Peta Credlin in this shot ...

But what's happened since Savva burst into print?

Well naturally attention has been paid to Savva in the Fairfax press in Niki Savva: How journalist went from conservative darling to Abbott 'she devil' (with forced video, natch)

She devil? Let it pass, because this is the nub of that matter ...

Credlin and Abbott loathed her columns so much they told The Australian's editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, to sack her. 
Mitchell refused, saying no prime minister or chief of staff had ever demanded such a thing.

That's how stupid, jointly or severally, Abbott and Credlin were ... with Abbott ultimately responsibility for the making of such a stupid request ...

And so to the defence.

Typically Abbott's response was to issue a short set of three word slogans ...

Oh not stop the boats, stop the carbon tax, stop the mining tax all over again ...

And a strong start to budget repair with the delusional effort of the 2014 budget is beyond the valley of the delusional ...

And then there's the ducking and the weaving and the refusal to rake over old coals.

And so Abbott once more relies on Credlin going in to battle for him ...

Well yes, a dignified silence would have been an infinitely preferable response to being shown posing down on the front page of the reptile Oz.

As for that golden rule of journalistic ethics, this was a book, a book written by a journalist, but a book, not a newspaper piece ... and so there's nothing extraordinary about it at all ...as per the Fairfaxians:

Controversially, Savva didn't approach Abbott or Credlin to comment for her book - despite detailing rumours of an affair between them. She also didn't speak to staffers with a more flattering view of the pair. This has made it easy for critics to argue she wrote her account with a pre-determined agenda. "My view was: why should I peddle their lies?" Savva says. "I knew from bitter experience that you could not trust their version of events." 
Veteran journalist and former colleague Laurie Oakes, who describes Savva as "gutsy", says it would have been "pointless" to ask them to participate. 
"I would check things with Abbott's office and be misled," he says. "One press officer even boasted openly about fooling members of the press gallery."

And then came this from another writer who'd attempted his own history, the oscillating fan ...

But back to the case for the defence, and please, oh please, don't run the up at 4 am slogging in coal mine and where's the gratitude and the thanks for it ... because you do it for your own reward and satisfaction ...

And please, oh please, don't mix that line with simple-minded three word slogans of the kind we endured and suffered under for years ...

What's there to say? Except perhaps ... flabbergasted ...

Because there in a nutshell is encapsulated everything that was wrong with the Abbott government.

Once more it's Credlin that does the running, and what's worse, with an indulgent, self-pitying tone ...

Do we really need to know that Credlin's father never finished school?

The pond's father got his intermediate certificate at the age of 15 and then was off to a working life always limited by his failure to finish high school ...

So what?

It's not as if others haven't experienced the tough world of politics, the shifting sands of betrayals, loyalties and smut ...

Savva knows how tough politics and journalism can be. When she was a reporter, a Labor MP spread rumours claiming she was getting her stories through an affair with a fellow politician. She and Peter Costello didn't speak for eight years after she published a book about her time working as his press secretary.

Here's the pond's tip for Credlin.

Stop trying to defend the indefensible, stop trying to burnish the god with feet of clay, who relied on a press release and ducked for cover, while you were paraded on the reptile front page ...

Tell Abbott to stop saying flabbergasted to his bromancer chum.

That was just another ham-fisted example of his remarkable deafness of ear, and his willingness to keep up the white-anting, the sniping and the bile. When Sheridan rang him for a comment, he should have said a simple "no comment" ...

At least if he wanted to maintain the pretence he wasn't motivated by anger and a deep desire to destabilise Turnbull.

For the love of the long absent lord, stop facilitating him. He was the one in charge, and he was the one who failed, and everything done for him was done with his permission, or if not, he should have reprimanded or sacked his recalcitrant employee ...

Yet here you are again ...

And all you've done is confirm that there might be something in all the idle chatter about Stockholm syndrome and co-dependency and a very strange and peculiar - perhaps weird - relationship ...

And above all, stop with the three word slogans.

We've had enough already to last a lifetime ...

Besides, you've already achieved what you wanted to achieve ...

Look, there it is on the left, right next to you ...

But at least the fuss has served its usual purpose for the pond, which is to be able to run the relevant Rowe cartoon, and more Rowe here ...