Lenore Taylor and Shalailah Medhora Thursday 30 July 2015

With the Speaker under increasing pressure to stand aside, further claims reveal that as a committee chair she claimed travel benefits even when the committee was not conducting hearings

On Thursday, after three weeks of refusing to apologise, Bronwyn Bishop said she was ‘sorry’ for ‘letting the Australian people down’ over travel claims. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Bronwyn Bishop claimed taxpayer-funded travel benefits for her work as a committee chairwoman on more than 15 occasions for times and places when the committee was not conducting hearings, a review of historic travel claims reveals.

Bishop, who is under increasing pressure to stand aside as Speaker over the travel claim controversy, said on Thursday she would repay claims made for secret meetings with unnamed sources associated with her committee work, which coincided with the interstate weddings of two Liberal colleagues.

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She said the claims were “technically within the guidelines” but “didn’t look right” and revealed she had asked the Department of Finance to review all her travel claims.

After three weeks of refusing to apologise, said she was “sorry” for “letting the Australian people down” over the travel claims and controversial helicopter flight.

Labor has questioned whether it is in fact “within the guidelines” for committee chairs to claim travel allowances or flights to conduct solo meetings that are not part of properly constituted committee hearings or meetings.

And a review of Bishop’s claims reveals at least 15 occasions in 2005 and 2006 when she claimed travel allowance as chair of the parliamentary standing committee on families and human services, when there are no records of committee hearings in that city at that time.

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Senior colleagues, including treasurer Joe Hockey, refused to publicly defend Bishop after her belated public apology Thursday. Many colleagues still see her bid to continue as Speaker as untenable and the prime minister, Tony Abbott, has kept an unusually low profile this week as the controversy continues. Bishop will face a no-confidence motion when parliamentary sittings resume on 11 August if she remains in the job.

The remuneration tribunal determination on allowances from 2006 states “the chair of a parliamentary committee shall be paid travelling allowance in respect of each overnight stay in a place other than his or her home base when travelling on parliamentary committee business”. Parliamentary committee business is not defined.

The parliamentary standing orders for committees do not appear to envisage chairs travelling for solo meetings.

Bishop has said one of those claims – for $600 worth of flights from Sydney to Albury in June 2006 on the weekend of colleague Sophie Mirabella’s nearby wedding – was justified because she held a secret meeting with an unnamed source regarding her committee’s inquiry into work life balance. She justified another claim in 2007 coinciding with colleague Teresa Gambaro’s wedding by citing another one-on-one meeting with an unnamed committee source.

Other committee members at the time have said the explanation “doesn’t stack up”.

Labor frontbencher Kate Ellis told Sky News “there was a very formal process that in order to be approved to travel for those hearings, we needed to have a meeting of the committee that had a full quorum; that declared that there would be a public hearing; and that we agreed; and it was placed in the minutes that there would be official business of the committee in this city or town, on this date”.

“So the reason I found it really strange is because that determination was never made about Albury over that weekend ... I went back and I checked my diary. I went back and I actually checked the list of public hearings for that inquiry and found that there was nothing listed.

“So it was only at that point that we then heard Bronwyn Bishop come out and say ‘no, no, this was because it was entirely confidential, so confidential I couldn’t tell the committee, and that as chair I took the responsibility to go and hear this secret evidence myself, not report it back to the committee and have no further discussions’. I mean frankly, it doesn’t add up. This just doesn’t stack up. It doesn’t pass any test. It was a ridiculous explanation that was given after, I think, Bronwyn Bishop was caught out,” Ellis said.

The 15 travel claims as committee chair, outside of committee hearings or committee work with the secretariat in Canberra, cover inquiries by the committee into the adoption of children from overseas, balancing work and families and the impact of illicit drug use on families. They are for travel all over the country, including Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Townsville, Brisbane, Adelaide, Whyalla and Bathurst.

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Bishop appeared on Macquarie Radio on Thursday morning to apologise for an “error of judgment” in using more than $5,000 of taxpayer dollars to fly between Melbourne and Geelong for a Liberal party fundraiser.

“I want to apologise to the Australian people for my error of judgment and to say sorry,” Bishop told commentator Alan Jones.

“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, because I feel I’ve let them down.”

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Later on Wednesday, the Speaker appeared contrite as she fronted the media before a planned event in Sale, Victoria.

“It’s important for me to talk with the Australian people. I love this country very much. And it does sadden me that I feel I’ve let them down,” Bishop said.

Her conduct at the doorstop was a departure from her demeanour at a press conference earlier this month, shortly after being forced to pay back the $5,000 used to hire the chopper flight. Then she said: “The biggest apology one can make is to repay the money.”

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, cast doubt over the Speaker’s motives.

“Mrs Bishop is apologising to save her job,” he told reporters. “Mrs Bishop is not apologising because she understands she’s done anything wrong.”

Hockey dodged reporters’ questions on the matter. “I’ll leave the Speaker to explain issues for herself, as she has. I have nothing further to add,” he said.

Parliamentary secretaries Kelly O’Dwyer and Paul Fletcher also refused to stand behind the Speaker when interviewed by Sky News on Thursday, but both backed her decision to apologise.

Bronwyn Bishop expenses row: historic claims reveal another 15 trips | Australia news | The Guardian