Speaker Bronwyn Bishop charges $5000 for chopper to fundraiser
5 November 2014
Former speaker of the House Bronwyn Bishop chartered a helicopter to travel from Melbourne to Geelong and back to attend a state Liberal Party fundraiser. The journey typically takes an hour each way by road. The cost of the flights was $5,227.27.
She initially refused to resign over the expenses claim, describing it as an “error of judgement”. However, she agreed to pay back the sum of the helicopter flight plus a penalty of $1,307. It later emerged that also in 2014, Bishop and four parliamentary delegates spent $88,084 on a two-week trip to Europe in her bid for presidency of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, including almost $1000 a day on private limousines.
 Bishop also charged taxpayers more than $3,300 for car expenses to attend the opera and other arts events from 2010 to 2013.
Bishop eventually resigned the speakership on 2Â August 2015.
She announced in December 2015 that she intended to recontest her seat of Mackellar, claiming she had been “exonerated” over “Choppergate”. However, Bishop was defeated in the pre-selection battle by Jason Falinski, who retained Mackellar for the Liberals at the 2016 election.