The destruction of Bronwyn Bishop’s career stands as a stain of shame on this parliament. The entire affair exposes the greed, cowardice, and hypocrisy of the current crop of politicians on all sides.

Ms Bishop’s sins were headline-grabbing but ultimately unremarkable, on whichever score you choose to judge her. Certainly, the expense ($5,000) of her controversial helicopter ride pales into insignificance against the sheer scale of self-indulgence her peers and colleagues have enjoyed over the years; not least her chief accuser, the hypocritical leader of opposition business in the House, Tony Burke.

Along with the quarter of a million dollars Mr Burke splurged on his well-documented first and business class jaunts accompanied by his kids or the adviser he ultimately left his wife for, Mr Burke also felt sufficiently self-important to help himself to the Prime Minister’s jet at a cost of over $16,000.

Currently, our politicians spend over half a billion dollars on ‘entitlements’ every year. That is the figure that needed chopping down to size, not the lonely figure of Bronwyn Bishop.

In terms of integrity, Ms Bishop repaid the money and publicly apologised – going so far as to demean herself in the humiliating fashion of today’s celebrity transgressors – for having disappointed the electorate. That of course should have been the end of the matter, but what is now clear is that a conspiracy of self-serving politicians from both major parties threw her to the baying wolves of the commentariat as little better than a blood sacrifice designed to placate the anger of the mob. From the moment Ms Bishop was hounded from office, a ‘line in the sand’ magically appeared, with the affair promptly being relegated to ‘the past’ and a (what is the collective noun in this instance – a ‘putrid’ perhaps?) a putrid of pollies escaping censure as effortlessly as they escaped having to repay any money.

Allow us the Zolan indulgence of ‘accusing’ those who have least covered themselves in glory throughout this affair.

Malcolm Turnbull’s infantile tweeting during his contrived stunt of a tram ride to Geelong, in which he publicly humiliated his struggling colleague with his ‘no aerial component involved’ tweet is symptomatic of why this narcissistic, populist multi-millionaire is unfit to ever again lead the Liberal party. Loyalty to the team is clearly not in his ‘brand personality’.

Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne also took the low road, collaborating with Labor’s Anthony Albanese to silence the entitlements debate in order to avoid discussing his own flamboyant uses of taxpayer funds. Disappointingly, others such as Scott Morrison joined in this supposed relegating of the affair to the history books post the Bishop immolation. Julie Bishop, likewise, did her struggling namesake no favours by, in effect, calling on her to resign.

Labor hypocrisy, naturally, was writ large over the entire affair. Where Bronwyn Bishop abused her entitlements by using them to attend party fundraisers, a (what’s the collective noun this time – a ‘sham’ perhaps?) a sham of Labor frontbenchers – from Bill Shorten to Penny Wong – equally took advantage of such largesse being ‘within the rules’. None deemed it worthy of sacrificing their career over.

Not one member of the feminist ‘sisterhood’ leapt to the defence of Ms Bishop as she was being daily demonised in the press. As usual, feminist principles are reserved for the exclusive use of the Left.

Last but not least come the familiar coterie of conservative commentators who leapt upon Ms Bishop with a similar knee-jerk ferocity that they displayed back in February. As Andrew Bolt has subsequently noted, there was nothing Ms Bishop did that Mr Burke and others haven’t done. He now regrets calling for her to step down.

Tony Abbott was right to initially defend Ms Bishop. He should have stood his ground. A principle is only a principle if it applies to all, not if it is selective – as Mr Albanese’s grotesque dissembling on The Bolt Report so eloquently demonstrated. The only person who comes out of this charade with their dignity intact is Bronwyn Bishop.

A bob each way

Canny ex-pat readers will have been alert to the fact that – as a pommy magazine domiciled down under – we carefully contrived to have a bet each way regarding the Ashes.

Back in July, James Nicholls (see p. x) asutely predicted an English victory. Meanwhile, Terry Barnes reminded us of his Speccie theory that the Aussies always win the Ashes under a Coalition government. So either way we could say: ‘We told ya so!’