Malcolm Turnbull says the political "feeding frenzy" around Prime Minister Tony Abbott's office, including chief of staff Peta Credlin, is "almost without precedent".
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But the Communications Minister has brushed aside suggestions that he - along with Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and a ginger group of ambitious MPs including Victorians Scott Ryan and Kelly O'Dwyer, Queenslanders Jane Prentice and Teresa Gambaro and WA MP Ken Wyatt - are actively undermining Ms Credlin.
The first edition of the Daily Telegraph on Monday named those seven MPs as among those feeding the discontent in Coalition ranks about the centralisation of power in the Prime Minister's office and Ms Credlin's "command and control" approach.
A subsequent edition of the newspaper removed the names of those seven MPs. It is unclear why.
Mr Turnbull, who initially employed Ms Credlin as his chief of staff when he was opposition leader, dismissed suggestions he was undermining the influential political staffer during an interview on the ABC's AM program.
"I think that might have been in an early edition, the Telegraph thought better of that," Mr Turnbull said. "This is the feeding frenzy, this is why I don't want to feed it because ... everybody has got, to paraphrase Paul Keating, every galah in the pet shop has got a view about this. I'm going to stay out of it.
"It's almost without precedent for the staff of any minister's office, let alone the Prime Minister's office, to be the subject of so much controversy and comment.
"I don't think it is in the government's interest to fuel that and so while I am flattered by your interest in my point of view on this matter, any opinions I have on the Prime Minister's office I will just keep for my private discussions with the Prime Minister."
Mr Turnbull's comments come a day after Ms Bishop urged her colleagues to stop backgrounding against each other. She also said she and Ms Credlin had a "very professional, close working relationship" but distanced herself from Mr Abbott's assertion that Coalition MPs criticising his chief of staff were sexist.
Queensland Liberal MP Warren Entsch on Sunday went public about his decision to lodge a complaint about Mr Abbott's claim that Ms Credlin had been subject to sexist treatment.
On Friday, Mr Abbott defended Ms Credlin's management of his office, asking: "Do you really think that my chief of staff would be under this kind of criticism if her name was P-E-T-E-R as opposed to P-E-T-A?".
