As speaker of the House she's supposed to be all moral with high standards of impartiality. Spending $5,000 on a helicopter ride to attend a Lieberal fundraising event doesn't exactly fit into "official duties" of speaker of the House.
When this first entered the news I just shrugged my shoulders and thought how typical of the Lieberals. However it's turned in to a main stream media explosion (oh how marvelous!). Indeed, it's starting to look very much like the bridge too far.
Labor has now referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police. The same thing that Abbott did in opposition with Peter Slipper, who's questionable costs were a mere $954. Bishops helicopter ride is just one of her questionable costs. She also charged $90,000 for a trip to Europe for a job interview.
Will we have her head over this? She should at least be stood down whilst investigations go on.
“Parliamentary entitlements are only permitted to be used for official purposes,” Conroy wrote. “Parliamentarians have previously been prosecuted for fraud for deliberately misusing their entitlements.”
The letter points to a standard government form for charter certification for parliament’s presiding officers that says “office holders may use charter transport (including aircraft, helicopters and other vehicles) for their personal transport in connection with their office holder duties”.
According to that form, the office holder must certify that “knowingly giving false or misleading information is a serious offence under the Criminal Code Act 1995” and that they “travelled on the charter and it was provided for official purposes”.
Conroy said media reports indicated the helicopter flight was to attend a fundraiser for Ron Nelson, a Liberal candidate in the Victorian state election.
The leader of opposition business, Tony Burke, said the AFP should “investigate what Bronwyn Bishop is currently trying to hide”.
“If there is a reasonable explanation, then Bronwyn Bishop should give it to the Australian people, and she should provide it to the Australian federal police,” Burke said.
“But if Bronwyn Bishop is claiming that part of the official purposes of being Speaker of the House of Representatives is to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser, then we all know she’s wrong and if she has claimed that on this form, then she has done so knowing the serious criminal consequences that will follow.
“I say to Bronwyn Bishop, if you’ve got nothing to hide, release the document, release it to the public, release it to the police. The Australian people believe that this one is completely beyond a joke. This is a born to rule attitude gone absolutely mad.” more
Down the corner store
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