Political commentator Niki Savva quits the Australian after Peta Credlin joins as columnist

Veteran political commentator Niki Savva has quit her column for the Australian after editors told her she had to share a page with the paper’s new recruit Sky News host Peta Credlin.

Credlin, a former chief of staff to Tony Abbott, wanted her column to appear on a Thursday so it didn’t clash with her weekend column for the News Corp tabloids.

But Savva’s column, which she has written for 10 years, is published on Thursdays and she didn’t want to move to another day or appear on the same day.

Savva, a regular on ABC’s Insiders, chose to walk away because she would feel constrained in what she could write about Credlin if they were published alongside each other, sources told Guardian Australia.

A former Liberal staffer for Peter Costello and John Howard, Savva wrote an award-winning book in 2016, The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government, in which she argued that Credlin shouldered a significant amount of blame for what went wrong with the Abbott government. The book made her unpopular with Abbott and Credlin.

The editor of the Australian, Michelle Gunn, confirmed Savva had resigned on Thursday.

“I was very surprised by her decision,” Gunn said. “She has been a highly valued contributor to our opinion pages for a long time.

“And it is strange that the appointment of Peta Credlin should be cited as a reason for her departure.

“As I told Niki, the addition of a new columnist should have no bearing on her position with the Australian.

“I was happy for Niki to continue with her column on Thursdays or alternatively to switch to any other day of the week she wanted to nominate.

“We have many columnists who disagree with one another on key issues.”

Savva, who calls herself a “conservative lefty” is an accomplished journalist who has been the political correspondent for the Australian twice and has headed up the Canberra bureaus of both the Herald Sun and the Age.

Her bestselling book revealed that Abbott was told to dump Credlin over the “perception” they were having an affair, a claim Abbott dismissed as “scurrilous gossip and smear”.

Savva’s final column appeared in the Australian on Thursday and was critical of the prime minister’s handling of the deputy prime minister’s role.

“Someone who has watched these great political pantomimes up close for decades says Morrison managed to lose Michael McCormack through ‘careless management’,” she wrote.

“McCormack was a loyal coalitionist, a fundamentally decent bloke who showed inner strength in a superb performance on his last day in the job.

“Morrison’s poor judgment, the debacle of the vaccination rollout, the failures on quarantine, the monumental debt created by the monumental spending, his intolerance of criticism will all catch up with him eventually, most likely not until after the election, when he will reap what he has sown.”

Credlin’s arrival at the Australian has been marked by several puff pieces.

“It’s been a privilege to have been a national News Corp Sunday columnist for six years,” Credlin told the Australian. “To now join The Australian as well, with its stable of thinkers, provocateurs and experts, is about as good as it gets, if you’re like me and believe in the battle of ideas.

“I got a lot of criticism from journalists but I got a huge amount of support from the public.”

Credlin’s media career has been marked by criticism of her aggressive questioning of premier Daniel Andrews at a daily update on Covid-19 before he had his accident.

She also had to apologise on air to Kevin Rudd as part of a confidential defamation settlement after saying his petition calling for a royal commission into the Murdoch media was a “data harvesting exercise”.

Credlin was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in the Queen’s birthday honours.

AOs are appointed for distinguished service of a high degree “to Australia or to humanity at large”.

Credlin was approached for comment.