Disgraced former speaker Bronwyn Bishop is insisting she "did nothing wrong" after cutting short her involvement in a probe of her travel expenses, which she claims were no worse than any other MPs.

"Just give me a break here.  I did nothing wrong.  None of any of that had anything to do with my greed or my pleasure," she said on Sky News, "What I was doing was my job and I was determined that I would do the job to the best of my ability."

Ms. Bishop resigned in 2015 over revelations she had blown $5000 of taxpayer money on a helicopter ride to go from Melbourne to Geelong - a mere 80 kilometers - to attend a Liberal party fundraiser.  At the time, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott promised to fully investigate her travel expenses and she promised to "cooperate fully". 

But the Melbourne Herald-Sun obtained details of an official report on her travels which said she stopped co-operating with the Department of Finance investigation last year, handing over only three of the 10 years of expenses they wished to assess.  Her reason:  she was quitting parliament after being dumped by Liberal preselectors.  The report (.pdf link) complained, "As the department is reliant on information provided by Ms. Bishop to fulfill its role in the exercise, no further assessment is possible in relation to the incomplete seven years."

The former speaker repaid $6768.25 in expenses, which included flights and car rides to attend three weddings - those of parliamentary colleagues Sophie Mirabella, Peter Slipper and Teresa Gambaro - and the funeral of Kerry Packer. 

Now that she's a retired MP, she receives a pension of $255,000 annually - which The Age's Adam Gartrell points out is "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".  It likely goes a long way to pay for her travel expenses to go on Sky News and whinge about "socialism".