At a certain point this week, the members of the ALP must have become a bit concerned. With still two weeks to go until parliament resumes there looked like a chance that Bronwyn Bishop might resign as speaker of the House of Representatives.
Since the details and cost of Bishop’s helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong, the ALP - with, for the first time in a long time, an assist from the tabloid media - had been calling for her to resign.
But it is obvious they don’t actually want her to resign – at least not yet. With Bishop standing firm, all attention is on her and the Prime Minister and then the government. Times such as these are golden for opposition parties. They pretty much have to do little except keep mentioning the issue just the right amount of times, let the media do most of the legwork, and hope the government keeps screwing it up.
And screw it up they have.
Bishop finally apologised on Thursday by going on the Alan Jones radio program and saying sorry "to the Australian people" for her "error of judgement." It says something about her viewpoint that she would believe the Alan Jones show is the right place to go to speak to "the Australian people."
It was a pathetic and clearly forced apology done to try to save her job. When she first was confronted by the media about the issue she pointedly refused to apologise, saying paying back the money was apology enough.
Nothing has made her more apologetic in the time since that other than the issue hasn’t gone away.
Of course, it is an apology that is utterly meaningless as the "probation" which the Prime Minister said she was on when the helicopter issue first arose.
No one was clear what the probation meant – did it mean if any more dodgy expenses were revealed that she would be sacked? Clearly not as when the fact she claimed travel expenses for trips to Sophie Mirabella’s and Teresa Gambaro’s weddings there was no suggestion that she had breached her probation.
The reason for the lack of clarity of what the probation meant was that it meant nothing. It was just a meaningless phrase uttered to placate the media and any concerned voters by suggesting something was being done but which in reality would see nothing change.
It was a nice microcosm of how the Abbott government approaches most issues.
The underlying problem though for the government is not that Bishop fattened out her expenses – we know politicians do that – but the fact that she is actually useless at her job.
When she was appointed as a "captain’s pick" by Tony Abbott to be Speaker, everyone knew she would ignore any sense that the position should be unbiased. Nothing in her entire political career gave any indication she would even bother to put up a pretence of impartiality.
But being unbiased is one thing, being a trained seal of the Leader of the House, Chris Pyne, is another thing.
As he showed at the end of Bill Shorten’s Budget reply speech last year, Pyne believes it is appropriate for him to direct the speaker to do his bidding.
Once upon a long time ago, Bishop would have been biased, but she would have at least had some semblance of her being beholden to no one. But there is none of that now when she sits in the chair.
Neither is there any semblance of competence.
Being a speaker is a damn hard job. There are 150 members whose electorates and/or ministerial titles you need to remember; there are masses of sections of standing orders to be able to recall, and you need to be able to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.
It requires someone with a sharp mind, and someone who is able to hold the respect of the house.
She has demonstrated neither of those qualities in her time in the chair.
Only Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are doing any real defending of her position. No one else in the Liberal or National Party would miss her should she vacate the chair. She adds nothing except the view that parliament is a juvenile uncontrollable mess, filled with people in important positions who see it as a gravy train. That’s not a good look when you are in government and expected to keep things orderly and the purse strings tight.
Fortunately for the ALP they are in opposition now, and thus they can take advantage of flagrant abuse of the grey areas of MPs travel expenses to make her incompetence and her bias an issue. They no longer need to show her any respect – because defending her now has become indefensible.
The public generally don’t give a damn about who is the speaker, but they don’t have a lot of time for MPs who claim expenses to travel to weddings. Apologising and paying back the money doesn’t do much either as the public knows such an approach wouldn’t wash were it they who had made a dodgy work related expense claim on their tax return.
So when parliament resumes the ALP will have a lot of leeway to make the parliament look unworkable, and by proxy, the government look out of control.
Their only worry would be that Tony Abbott comes to his senses and forces Bishop to resign, for she will never step down by her own volition.
But in dumping Bishop, Abbott will once again be highlighting that when he makes a captain’s pick, he picks a dud.
But if he allows her to stay he will be highlighting to people that not only was the pick a dud, but that he doesn’t even realise it.
The ALP will be happy for her to stay for a long while yet.
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