Bronwyn Bishop finally addresses that infamous helicopter flight

Former speaker Bronwyn Bishop has finally broken her silence and addressed the helicopter flight that ended her career as Speaker of the House.

Appearing in Sky News last night, Ms Bishop spoke to reporter David Speers and admitted that taking a $5,227.27 charter helicopter flight from Melbourne to a golf course near Geelong in 2014 was “a pretty dumb thing to do”.

She said at the time she hadn’t thought of it that way and was more focussed on getting to a fundraising event than how she was spending taxpayer money.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It was probably a pretty dumb thing to do,” she said.

“There was a lot of discussion about what other people had done, it became I think a very messy period but there were lots of people that were very supportive.”

The flight eventually led to Tony Abbott asking her to resign from her position, putting a strain on their once chummy relationship.

“When Tony asked me to resign himself I did,” she said.

“As I said it was to protect him and I did, that’s it it’s kind of yesterday’s news.

“It was a dumb thing to do and I did repay the money.”

When Ms Bishop delivered her resignation speech to parliament earlier this year, she alluded to tension behind the scenes, saying there was “much more than meets the eye in that saga. But not for now.”

She refused to comment further in the interview last night though, leaving people to wonder what really happened, and instead said that she has complete faith that Mr Abbott will retain his seat in Warringah and that the Coalition will win the election come July 2.

What do you think of Bronwyn Bishop’s apology? Are you glad she’s finally admitted to wrongdoing?