Credlin, who became a Sky News commentator after leaving politics, made her comments during the final minutes of Sky's Sunday Agenda.

If you missed it, this is what she said:

Along comes a carbon tax. It wasn’t a carbon tax, as you know. It was many other things in nomenclature terms but we made it a carbon tax. We made it a fight about the hip pocket and not about the environment. That was brutal retail politics and it took Abbott about six months to cut through and when he cut through, Gillard was gone.

"It wasn't a carbon tax, as you know."

Okay, okay, okay. Let's just provide some context. Australia has a complicated history in trying to do what many countries have already done – put a price on carbon emissions.

Emissions trading scheme proposals contributed to the demise of Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader in 2009 and Kevin Rudd as prime minister in 2010. Julia Gillard finally introduced a carbon pricing scheme in 2011.

It was Tony Abbott who re-framed Gillard's scheme as a "carbon tax", even though after the first year the price on carbon emissions was no longer fixed, and was instead set by the market.

Abbott rode the anti-carbon tax movement all the way into The Lodge and eventually had everyone, including Labor and the media, calling it a carbon tax.