BRONWYN Bishop should get the chop. She has had a long and determined political career based on the principle of “tough it out”. She will attempt to do the same now.

However, if she applies the same rules as she has applied to others throughout her career, her position would be simply untenable.

The Speaker is responsible to ensure that the conduct of the Parliament is beyond reproach. This applies to claims, allowances and general ethical behaviour. She operates within the limits of rulings such as those of the remuneration tribunal and the legislation that covers the parliament. Although she has spent the best part of three decades in parliament, Bishop is a lawyer who retains her NSW practising certificate as a solicitor. She should know the difference between technically legal and unethical behaviour and provide instruction and an example to other MPs. Instead she has opened the Pandora’s Box of parliamentary entitlements.

While this shadow hangs over her head she cannot possibly carry out this responsibility appropriately. Going to a Liberal Party golf club fundraiser is certainly not, and could never be, an appropriate use of this kind of taxpayers’ money.

The argument put by Speaker Bishop that it is “within parliamentary guidelines” held no water when the Liberals were in opposition and were pursuing former Speaker Peter Slipper over a $900 Cabcharge bill that, after going to court, was found to have “operated within the guidelines”.

The $5000 chopper ride is certainly excessive. Yet another difficult decision falls in the lap of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is constantly wrestling with unrest and divisiveness within his own ministerial and party ranks. He certainly did not need this distraction at a time when the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, was on the back foot.

And Shorten did not take long to seize the opportunity calling the overall expenditure of the current Speaker an “egregious abuse of entitlements” and “this is the sort of arrogance which makes Australians so angry”.

What really makes so many Australians so angry about this sort of behaviour is that the Coalition is on a constant drive for savings and smaller government. Apparently, this is only appropriate when it applies to public servants, the middle class, the poor, the vulnerable and, particularly, to welfare recipients.

Treasurer Joe Hockey when asked if the chopper ride passes the “sniff test” on 2UE replied that it “instinctively, it doesn’t”. What else could he say when he has made so much of “the age of entitlement is over”?

Arrogance, excessive expenditure and justification as “parliamentary entitlements” raises once again the issue of how some of our MPs behave. In 2013, Fairfax media conducted investigations into travel entitlements that exposed many dubious claims by politicians for attending weddings, rugby league matches and other social functions. In the past Tony Abbott has also been caught up in the entitlements fiasco repaying $1095 for attending the wedding of former colleague Sophie Mirabella in 2006.

In the ACT there is an Ethics and Integrity Adviser and a similar position is found, for example, in the Tasmanian Parliament.

No such position exists federally. Attempts to achieve this have been stymied or delayed. Greens leader Bob Brown introduced the first integrity commissioner Bill in 2010. It lapsed. The most recent attempt is the National Integrity Commission Bill 2013, introduced by Senator Christine Milne on November 13, 2013. The legislation has been through its second reading speech in the Senate and sits on the shelf awaiting attention in the House of Representatives. Or perhaps awaiting for parliament to be prorogued so that it can also lapse!

Bronwyn Bishop made her reputation as a steely stickler for detail in the estimates committees of the Senate in 1992. Her unrelenting attacks, particularly on then commissioner for taxation Trevor Boucher, were unyielding, harsh and unforgiving. Her concern was that Boucher was pursuing big business figures and politicians over taxation issues. And she pursued him until he was forced to resign. Now it is her turn.