Labor has accused Bronwyn Bishop of “outsourcing” her private dining room as a Liberal party fundraising venue, but the Coalition used its numbers in the House of Representatives to prevent the issue being immediately referred to the parliamentary privileges committee.



Asked after question time about reports that she had hosted a Liberal fundraiser in her private dining room on budget night, the Speaker responded that all members were able to use their offices as they saw fit. She refused to say how many fundraisers she had hosted there.

The leader of opposition business, Tony Burke, responded angrily, saying parliamentary venues were usually hired at a fee of $600 and because of the independence of the office no previous Speaker had used the private dining room to host party fundraisers.

Burke said he had found it difficult to believe the Speaker’s suite had been “outsourced to the Liberal party as a fundraising venue … your job is not owned by the Liberal party in a way you can dish out a venue for which anywhere else in Parliament House the Liberal party would have to pay $600”.

Burke said it was an “appalling precedent” and came when Bishop was already “under pressure” as “the most biased Speaker we’ve ever had”.

Christopher Pyne, the government’s leader of the house, said Labor was using “smear and innuendo” to denigrate the Speaker. He said Labor was “playing the woman not the ball”.

The Greens MP Adam Bandt and the independents Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie voted with Labor but the motion was lost along party lines.



Burke then wrote to the privileges committee asking that it investigate “whether the Speaker’s use of her Parliament House dining room for Liberal party fundraisers constitutes an improper interference with the operations of the House of Representatives”.



A spokesman for Bishop has previously said she had not broken any electoral laws by holding the fundraising dinner. No taxpayers’ funds were used and all costs associated with food and drink at the private functions had been charged to her private account.



But Labor is likely to continue its attack, which is directed at Bishop’s alleged partiality. It unsuccessfully moved a motion of no confidence in her in March.

On that occasion, the first vote of no confidence in a parliamentary Speaker since 1949, Labor said Bishop was biased, incompetent and failing in her interpretation of the standing orders.

At that time the opposition lost, by 83 to 51, the vote on a suspension of standing orders to bring on the no-confidence vote.

This month Bishop was again under fire when social media erupted after a video circulated showing Pyne directing her to stand up to cut off applause for the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, after his budget-in-reply speech. Bishop immediately rose from her seat.