Bronwyn Bishop resigns as Speaker - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14588757
Finally!

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bronwyn-bishop-resigns-as-speaker-20150802-gipry2.html

Bronwyn Bishop resigns as Speaker
Bronwyn Bishop is resigning as Speaker following a string of revelations suggesting systemic abuse of taxpayer funded travel entitlements.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott called a snap media conference on Sunday afternoon to announce the Speaker's resignation.

"Today Ms Bishop called me to let me know that she would be resigning," Mr Abbott said.

Mr Abbott insisted the problem was the system of MPs entitlements and not the users and announced a major review into the scheme to be headed by former Finance Secretary David Tune.

Labor has been demanding the Speaker's resignation over revelations she hired a $5, 000 private helicopter to travel from Melbourne to Geelong for a Liberal fundraiser.

Mrs Bishop initially refused to apologise although agreed to repay the money. She has since issued a grovelling apology.

Mr Abbott refused to criticise his long-time friend saying the system had let her and other MPs down.

"We have a situation where spending is arguably inside the rules but plainly outside community expectations," he said


Finally she has (presumably) been asked to fall on her sword. She may be tough-as-nails but she has shown she could not care less about her abuses of her expense privileges at the expense of many people much poorer than her. Bye bye Bronnie! Good riddance.
#14588980
So she is no longer speaker. Anyone want to speculate what the next year of her expenses claims as a MP will be ? 500k ?

Abbot has said the fiance investigation will continue but has not set he will release it. There is a long term expenses review that will report in the second half of 2016. He's kicked the issues down the road. We wont see either of these reports before the next election.
#14589299
Well hopefully some good will actually come from this and eventually there will be some real reform to parliamentary expense entitlements.

In the meantime it will be pretty entertaining watching the Liberals attempt to come up with a new speaker that hasn't claimed ridiculous expenses at some point in their career (Phillip Ruddock was touted until it emerged that he spend $6000 on a trip to Perth). They may be reduced to sitting a first-termer in the chair that hasn't had a chance to spend any money yet one can dream...
#14589317
Best news in Oz politics for ages. Not that I imagine her successor will be much different.

Apparently there's been a new wave of use/abuse of entitlements, particularly by the Coalition. She is part of a wider problem in a number of offenders.
#14589524
Bishop only resigned after Abbott realised he had an imminent back-bench revolt on his hands

In my view this episode just epitomises the weakness of Abbott's leadership. Any normal leader would have told her to resign straight away. But Abbott is still terrified of being seen to be weak by caving in to his critics. Its clear he desperately wanted to stare down the demands for her resignation - just as he had stared down demands to dump Peta Credlin. And it was only after he realised he had a mass revolt on his hands if she didn't go - that he was reluctantly forced to act.

This episode more than anything else reminds us that Abbott's leadership is still terminal - even if the final death blow won't be until the next election.
#14590010
It's concerning how wilfully dismissive he is of his party's and the publics wishes on these matters. He did the same with Hockey as well. It's almost suicidal - both sides of the aisle have their hands dirty with expense abuses, and yet he allows this to turn into a circus with the focus increasingly coming on him because he just disregarded Bishops rorts and ignored community anger over the whole thing.

He only seems to make things harder for himself. Still, maybe a narrative of loyalty is what he is aiming for after the backstabbing of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.

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