Veteran Liberal MP Philip Ruddock has expressed his interest in replacing Bronwyn Bishop as the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mrs Bishop resigned from the position yesterday afternoon following sustained pressure over her travel expenses.

She had faced fierce criticism for almost three weeks since it was first revealed she spent more than $5,000 chartering a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser last November.

Coalition MPs the ABC has spoken to believe "Father of the House" Mr Ruddock, 72, is the most likely replacement for Mrs Bishop.

Mr Ruddock's office released a statement saying he would be available if his parliamentary colleagues sought it.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-03/philip-ruddock-frontrunner-to-replace-bronwyn-bishop-as-speaker/6666754

"My mind may not be as sharp as that of Bronwyn", added the wise old guy, "but I can do better impressions of a snoring Steve Letterman than a kerosene bath could..."

meanwhile, on the perk-o-matic front:

Tony Abbott rejected the notion that Bronwyn Bishop was offered any inducements to stand down from the Speaker’s job and he confirmed the next Speaker would be a matter for the party room.

Asked whether Bishop was offered another position if she stepped down, the prime minister said “there has been no offer”.

“Bronwyn came to the right decision,” said Abbott. “She came to [the] right decision and while she obviously had done the wrong thing in a number of significant respects, she abundantly did the right thing yesterday.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/03/tony-abbott-denies-bronwyn-bishop-offered-inducements-to-quit-as-speaker

I thus guess Bronwyn won't be offered a job such as official barnacle inspector of submarines... like her mate Mirabella has been.  I am prepared to see her as a fully paid clown touring old folks home and throwing lollies dipped in kerosene. Homer Simpson's dad might fall in love again...

The irony is exquisite. Nearly a quarter of a century ago Bronwyn Bishop rose to national prominence on the issue of public accountability. Her forum was Senate estimates and joint public accounts committee hearings, and her quarry, public servants who had the misfortune to appear before her.

These hearings had traditionally been controversy-free, serving mainly to make public servants and their departments more accountable through an assessment of how and where they spent their appropriations.

That all came to a spectacular end when Bronwyn Bishop became – to use former Fairfax columnist Alan Ramsey's immortal phrase – "the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the estimates committee system", turning the hearings into virtual show trials.

Who can forget her clash in 1992 with Trevor Boucher when she scolded, taunted and badgered the then-commissioner of taxation over the ATO's alleged political bias and its borrowing and spending habits.

Boucher described Bishop's line of attack as "utterly offensive"; so, too, the chairman of the inquiry, Labor's Gary Punch, who upbraided the Liberal senator for her "vilification of a decent public servant."

There was also the luckless Lynda Tin, an executive project officer with the federal parliamentary library, who had been invited to China to help foster contacts between the two countries. The Chinese government was footing the bill for internal travel and accommodation, while the library was paying for the return airfare to China.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has suggested the controversy over former speaker Bronwyn Bishop's travel expenses may have ended her political career.

Mrs Bishop resigned from the position at the weekend but in a statement said she would continue to serve on the backbench.

Mr Abbott said he and the Government had paid a price for the furore but Mrs Bishop had paid the highest price.

"She's lost a position that she loved and it's likely her career in the Parliament is substantially at an end," Mr Abbott told FIVEaa Radio this morning.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-04/entitlements-recommendations-never-implemented/6669968

Let's hope that Turdy's career goes up in flame as well soon for serving porkies after porkies as a way to run a government — it's not... Should we be served rotten food a a restaurant day in day out, we would not go there, would we?

Yet another sleepless night spent anguishing over the incalculable loss of Bronwyn Bishop to Australia’s struggling democracy & the ‘personal price’ paid by Prime Minister Tony Abbott for that loss.

Bitter tears rolled down my cheeks at the wicked injustice that we Australians had visited on the selfless Ms Bishop, after she had received our all in her quest to serve an ungrateful nation. I couldn’t understand the cruelty of a rotten system, obviously designed to entrap innocent & unwary politicians as they struggle to serve our best interests.

My sense of anguish was heightened by the Prime Minister’s observations that Ms Bishop had ‘lost the position that she loved’ & that her ‘career in parliament is substantially at an end’; a ‘high price for someone who has dedicated 30-odd years to very intense public service’.

Of course we shouldn’t lose complete faith in the ‘Lucky Country’, as doubtless there will be ample opportunity for us to acknowledge Ms Bishop’s contribution & help keep the wolf from her door through the occasional diplomatic posting, appointments to government boards/commissions or the chairing of important public enquiries.

The Liberal partyroom has selected Tony Smith as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Liberal lower house members conducted a secret ballot and Mr Smith will be officially elected when Parliament returns from its winter recess at 10:00am (AEST).

Follow our live blog for coverage of the selection of the new Speaker.

Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-10/live-blog-liberal-mps-vote-for-new-speaker/6684324

The ABC had this picture showing the deed... It has been replaced by a backslapping congratulation between all the Libs (CONservatives)... But this picture which has since been relegated to the back of the article tells the story:

See toon at top...

Behind the Abbott government’s very bad week – a careening series of disasters that looked like the political version of an AAMI ad – is a common thread that could wreck it permanently. Tricky politics has driven Tony Abbott into yet another crisis.

So many of the prime minister’s problems begin in the strange netherworld of decision making, where policy is crafted to fit a slogan rather than the other way around, based on the insulting assumption that voters are too dumb to notice.

All politicians, from all sides, weigh policy ideas against how they might play in the electorate but this government is coming up with the slogan and calculating the political “play” before it even has a policy. It’s a reckless way to run the country. Now the trickiness is sometimes aimed at internal opponents as well as Labor.

Same-sex marriage, for example, was going to be a difficult issue for any Coalition leader. In the end the party backed Abbott’s view that it should continue to oppose any change to the definition of marriage during this parliament but that this position wouldn’t be tenable any longer and that maybe there should be a popular vote on the issue.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/aug/14/coalition-a-victim-of-its-own-trickiness-as-colleagues-lose-faith-in-tony-abbott

There is a lot of Major Frank Burns in Turdy Abbutt...  All regulations and flag-crap, fearful of gays and stinking like a turd in the sun, when accidentally commander of the camp. Frank, when in charge of rationing, will self-serve himself and his floosie, Margaret. Turdy lies on the same crooked bed. With the generosity of a bulldog with rabies, he will fall into the newly dug latrine full of stuff. The only difference is Major Burns was a fictitious character played by a very good actor. Here, unfortunately, Turdy plays himself as bad as himself in the real world. Get rid of him, please...

Apparently according to a newspaper article, cartoonists are exhausted. They have exhausted all the possible joke permutations about a certain Ms Bishop's association with a chopper. She is now polishing the backbenches of parliament with her fondament. 

Praise the lord, Zeus, but a certain Betoota Advocate still found some energy to do some more lampooning:

Canberra public servant Grahame Frog was in the row behind the parliamentarian and he says that Bishop doesn’t know good plane etiquette.

“She reclined her seat all the way back as soon as she got onboard,” he said.

“Then she kicked her shoes off and told her media advisor to get her a Diet Coke. He looked tired. But the worst thing she did was clap when the plane landed,”

read more: http://www.betootaadvocate.com/uncategorized/bronwyn-bishop-says-it-was-totally-her-decision-to-fly-commercial/

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Here if you've never travelled in the US, you might not get the joke about applauds for landing a plane... In the US, they do this on a regular basis... The passengers applaud the pilot for a safe landing.... We Aussies just carry on watching the TV screen until docked at the terminal and grumble about having to wait in a crowded aisle full of oversized backpacks for the door to open.

Ms Bishop of course did travel "Cattle Class"...:

“The idea of spending hours on end trapped in a metal tube with mouth-breathers and wage earners isn’t my idea of a good time,”