Consider this: since Bronwyn Bishop finally left the federal Parliament nine months ago – kicking and screaming after being rolled by her own party – Australian taxpayers have paid her nearly $200,000.
Her parliamentary pension delivers her roughly $700 a day – 11 times more than your average age pensioner. She gets more every single day than workers on the minimum wage get in a week.
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Bishop not sorry for expenses
Former federal government Speaker Bronwyn Bishop has insisted she did nothing wrong with her travel expenses. Vision: Sky News
Is your blood boiling yet? Well, we'll be paying her about a quarter of a million dollars every year for the rest of her life. And knowing Bishop – her sheer obstinacy – the 74-year-old will live for many years to come.
What do taxpayers get for this investment?
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Well, nowadays she spends a lot of her time on Sky News venting her spleen about "socialists" – a label that seems to encompass just about everyone but her. And presumably Sky pays her extra to do that.
She was at it again last night. In yet another gobsmackingly brazen display of entitlement, Bishop made it clear she learnt nothing from the expenses scandal that ended her speakership and, ultimately, her career.
"Gimme a break," she spat. "I did nothing wrong."
Pointing to a front-page story proving she refused to properly co-operate with the "choppergate" investigation, Bishop bemoaned there were no front pages about the scandals rocking the Victorian Labor government.
"It's one rule for those on the conservative side and another rule for socialists," she said.
But of course, there have been front pages about those Labor scandals – many of them – in both The Age and the Herald Sun.
Federally, Labor MPs have been humiliated by reporting on their dumb actions around expenses, donations and financial interests. Just ask Sam Dastyari or David Feeney, both now on the backbenches. For that matter, let's ask Eddie Obeid.
Yet Bishop clings to this fiction she was only targeted because she's a conservative.
She's the prime example of what happens to politicians – particularly those like her, the righteous warriors so ideologically blinkered they think they can do no wrong – when they're in the Canberra bubble too long.
She lost touch not only with voters and their standards and expectations, she also lost touch with reality.
She lives in a world where the reds are still lurking under the bed. Where even Rupert Murdoch's papers are being run by commies, desperately trying to bring down the conservative establishment.
She also clearly hasn't grappled with this simple fact: it was not the media that ultimately ended her career, but her own party. Fed up with her imperious nonsense, they dumped her like yesterday's garbage.
I suppose they're all socialists too.
But really, if she's so concerned about socialism maybe she should lead by example and forgo that $250,000 pension.
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