The furore surrounding Bronwyn Bishop shows no sign of abating after it was revealed that she once spent more than $1,000 of taxpayers’ money in one day on chauffeur-driven limousines.
Sunday News Corp newspapers reported that Bishop has spent $260,237 in the past five years on limousines, chauffeur-driven cars and private vehicles, including commonwealth cars, which are issued to parliamentarians for specific instances.
She spent $1,071 on 4 April 2012 to attend the premiere of the show Yes, Prime Minister. She was opposition spokeswoman on seniors and special minister of state at the time.
She booked two commonwealth cars for herself and two staffers to attend the performance at the Sydney Theatre Company in Sydney’s Walsh Bay. Her register of interests shows the tickets were a gift.
Commonwealth cars are for official parliamentary business, usually to ferry politicians between their Canberra residence and parliament house during sitting weeks. The guidelines state that MPs should not use commonwealth cars in their city of residence, or in cities in which they have electorate offices, but they can use them if they have official parliamentary or committee business.
It is unclear whether Bishop, who has held the northern Sydney seat of Mackellar since 1994, had official business in Walsh Bay on 4 April 2012.
Calls and emails to Bishop’s spokesman, Damien Jones, by Guardian Australia have gone unanswered. Jones has been reluctant to comment on parliamentary entitlements while the Department of Finance conducts a review on Bishop going back a decade.
But Jones has told News Corp that the Speaker preferred taking Royale Limousines, a company that uses BMWs, because they can drive in the bus lane, allowing her to get around quicker than if she took commonwealth cars.
Pressure is mounting on the prime minister, Tony Abbott, to ask Bishop to stand aside as Speaker, as revelations about her use of public money have dominated the news agenda for more than a fortnight.
Labor has been using the revelations to keep pressure on Abbott, with the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, saying the prime minister has to show leadership on the issue.
“He now needs to act because it is now paralysing the parliament of Australia,” he told reporters on Sunday.
Shorten said Labor was “open” to looking at reform of the entitlements system.
“What has happened with the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and the protection racket being run by Tony Abbott of Speaker Bishop, well exceeds any of the debate about reform,” he said.
The agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce, told Sky News on Sunday that he supports Bishop. The ongoing entitlements row could open a can of worms for other parliamentarians, he said.
“In this game, as you would know, you start throwing rocks and there won’t be a person left in the parliament because everybody will have some issues somewhere in the past that is difficult to explain,” he said.
Joyce defended Bishop’s use of taxpayer dollars to attend public events, saying she has “always been a high-profile identity”.
“If you want a crowd anywhere, invite Bronnie along and you’ll get a crowd,” he said. “She always, and still is, a big hit.”
On Sunday Fairfax Media reported that Bishop has cancelled plans to fly to New York at taxpayers’ expense later this month for a speakers’ summit. The event would have constituted official parliamentary business and was therefore within the guidelines.
“The Speaker was considering travelling to New York for that meeting but she has since decided not to,” Jones told Fairfax, adding that the decision had been made “in recent times”.
Labor has written to the Australian federal police asking it to reconsider its decision not to investigate Bishop over her use of public money to charter a helicopter between Melbourne and Geelong to attend a party fundraiser.
“I believe that the growing catalogue of misuse and the possible commission of serious offices warrants a police investigation,” the Labor spokesman on waste, Pat Conroy, wrote to the AFP’s assistant commissioner, Shane Connelly.
The independent MP Andrew Wilkie is pushing for Bishop to be investigated for fraud, after fresh allegations emerged on Saturday that she had spent $6,000 on chartering a luxury aircraft for a 160km trip between Sydney and Nowra in 2014.
“In my opinion, this is fraud and should be dealt with as a possible criminal matter,” Wilkie said.
Wilkie and a fellow crossbencher, the Palmer United party leader, Clive Palmer, will push on with a no-confidence motion against the Speaker when parliament resumes on August 10.
“She’s rorted the system and thumbed her nose at the Australian people,” Palmer told ABC TV’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“The real issue here is that Bronwyn Bishop has lost the trust of the Australian people. If she can’t run her entitlements, how can Abbott run the country, that’s what people are saying,” he said. The prime minister had failed to remove Bishop as Speaker because he is “protecting his backside”.
Shorten said the opposition had lost confidence in Bishop, too. “On one level it doesn’t matter who moves the motion of no confidence. Labor has no confidence in the Speaker,” he said.
On Thursday Bishop apologised for misusing public money to charter the helicopter, but she refused to resign.
“I want to apologise to the Australian people for my error of judgment and to say sorry,” Bishop said. “You know, that helicopter, yes, I was short of time. But it is no excuse, and it was an error of judgment. And really, as I said, I want to apologise to the Australian people, becauseI feel I’ve let them down.”
Bishop dug in on the use of public money to attend the weddings of two colleagues, Sophie Mirabella and Teresa Gambaro, insisting they were “within the guidelines”, but offered to repay the money because she acknowledged it was not “a good look”.
She claimed that on both occasions she had meetings with unnamed sources in relation to her work as chair of the standing committee on families and human services in the same locations as the wedding.
Guardian Australia has revealed that Bishop claimed 15 separate trips as chair of the committee at times and locations when the committee had no public hearings listed.
Senior cabinet ministers, including the deputy leader, Julie Bishop, the treasurer, Joe Hockey, and the social services minister, Scott Morrison, have refused to publicly back the Speaker, but have agreed that apologising was the right thing for her to do.
