No action from Abbott on Speaker

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has also suggested Mrs Bishop is considering her position ahead of the next sitting of Parliament, in less than two weeks.

Pressure is mounting for Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to step aside amid revelations she charged taxpayers to attend the wedding of another Liberal MP.

“But I believe it’s important the Department of Finance be able to carry out an investigation”, Ms Bishop added.

If the Speaker was not “considering her position” before today, she has effectively now been told she should be.

Mr Shorten said if the “Choppergate…soap opera” was not over by the time Parliament resumes on August 10, Labor would seek to raise the issue in the House and did not rule out introducing a no-confidence motion.

Cabinet minister Scott Morrison declined to declare confidence in the Speaker.

She’s facing similar questions over her claiming of travel costs to the wedding of Teresa Gambaro in Brisbane in April 2007, where she says she met with another confidential source. Mrs Bishop is refusing to do so.

Mrs Bishop has been engulfed in a furore over her use of taxpayer-funded political entitlements, after it was revealed that she spent ,227 on a charter helicopter to travel a short distance from Melbourne to Geelong for a political fundraiser.

“There is a Department of Finance process that’s underway and I’m not one to offer public lectures to my colleagues on these things”, he said.

But a spokesman for Mrs Bishop told Fairfax Media on Wednesday “the Speaker is not resigning and will not be resigning”.

This latest development comes as pressure mounts on Ms Bishop over the legitimacy of her charging taxpayers for $600 for flights to Albury in 2006 on a trip to a seperate colleagues wedding.

Getting rid of Bishop won’t change the fact that we have a travel entitlement system that allows for flagrant abuse-and it won’t stop other politicians from arranging fig-leaf official business meetings to coincide with interstate weddings and sporting events, so taxpayers end up paying for their social travel.