AUSTRALIAN voters are so fed up with entitled members of parliament and their excuses for using taxpayers’ cash they are seeking to drain the Canberra swamp of career politicians, a prominent electoral expert has warned.

Drawing on shocking results from his recent research that showed Australian voter satisfaction at a record low, ANU political professor Ian McAllister told news.com.au the latest controversy surrounding sidelined Health Minister Sussan Ley’s use of taxpayer funds was exactly the sort of behaviour by politicians that’s stirring an electoral revolt.

The embattled MP has been stood down from her senior parliamentary position while taxpayer-funded trips to the Gold Coast — where she bought a luxury investment property and attended social events — are being investigated.

While the government is seeking a quick fix to the growing scandal, Professor McAllister warns the issue at hand goes deeper than a few suspicious taxi receipts and questionable trips to Queensland’s resort capital.

When a politician is busted taking advantage of their position, be it hitching a ride on a chopper, double-dipping on tax deductions, or chauffeuring their pets around the countryside, we hear cries to rein in spending and make pollies more accountable.

But Prof McAllister says voters outrage is over their representative’s behaviour rather than the system that facilitates it.

“The real problem is not the legal framework. The problem is there’s a lot of discretion. The real issue is this demand for a cultural change so that you get more politicians that are directly interested in serving the public than their own careers,” he said.

The Australian Electoral Study, led by Prof McAllister and published ahead of the new year showed Australians were more dissatisfied than ever with their political representatives. It’s a phenomenon that has been spreading around the world — crystallised by the election of Donald Trump to the most powerful office in the US. And it is slowly rearing its head in Australia with the protest-driven election of inexperienced parliamentarians like Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer.

“Australia would be one of the leading countries with the proportion of politicians that we have who spend their careers in the political system, and it’s becoming very clear that people don’t want and won’t stand for this,” he said.

“There’s a real disaffection with career politicians and a lot of it seems to come back to entitlements, using money in particular ways, this grey area where people in power have flexibility in the way they use money, travel, things like that.”

Prof McAllister says voter dissatisfaction has been building significantly since 2007, but the 2016 data, which used the same questions and methodology the significant survey of 3000 Australians has relied on for more than four decades, he “thought there was a mistake in the software”.

“There was no mistake, there’s something going on,” he said.

“There’s clearly a disaffection there which is being indicated.”

Voters in the US backed president-elect Trump’s aim to “drain the swamp”, a catchy slogan that translated to ridding the political system of entitled career politicians, and Prof McAllister said Australian voters have indicated they’re keen to do the same.

There is some difficulty, however, with Australian voters quickly turning on the alternative politicians they elect out of protest, meaning we tend to end up with the same brand of major party politicians the electorate claims to despise.

“The government needs, both sides of politics need to enforce better behaviour amount their members and that’s tough — you’ve got a lot of people in government and you can’t regulate them all the time so you have a lot of flexibility and discretion,” he said.

“The longer term issue is how do you get different sorts of people into politics, that is a much bigger ask. That involves institutional change to politics.”

Prof McAllister said the government’s grip on economic management was also to blame for voters’ dissatisfaction, and explained the resounding reaction to entitlement scandals like Ms Ley’s.

“We talk about people’s distrust in politicians, but what all of this is over is really a lacklustre economic performance,” he said.

“There’s a significant proportion of people out there who are having their pensions cut, their super cut, having these things they’re used to taken away and they’re feeling under economic pressure and children at school and mortgages and things, then they see this behaviour among politicians.

“That’s what’s driving it. If people were feeling very prosperous and the economy was growing, if politician took a trip to the Gold Coast they wouldn’t care. That’s at the back of it as well.”

Ms Ley has maintained she has done nothing wrong as details of her taxpayer-funded trips continue to emerge, and the opposition bays for her scalp.

Revelations she bought a $795,000 luxury apartment from a Liberal National Party donor during an official visit to the Gold Coast in 2015 have been followed by details of claimed travel costs to the popular holiday spot for New Year’s Eve celebrations in 2013 and 2014.

Fronting the media on Monday, Ms Ley said she was “confident that the investigation will demonstrate that no rules were broken whatsoever”.

The longtime public servant, who has represented the rural NSW division of Farrer since 2001, risks joining a growing list of Australian political figures who were undone by travel claims that didn’t stand up to public scrutiny.

Former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s decades-long political career came crashing down in 2015 after she repaid more than $5000 over chartering a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal Party fundraiser, and was revealed to have claimed flights to attend the weddings of two former Liberal MPs.

Another former scandal-plagued Speaker, Peter Slipper, had to pay back $17,285 over a decade including $7000 in family travel perks.

Labor Senator Sam Dastyari was forced to resign from the frontbench last year after having an education company with links to the Chinese government foot the bill for a travel charge he “didn’t want to pay” after exceeding his parliamentary travel budget.

When parliament resumes, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will be under pressure to act on a proposal to scrap travel entitlements for retired MPs and their families which they are currently entitled to under the Life Gold Pass Scheme. It was a Bill the parliament didn’t have time for last year.

The will also face a renewed push to clean up entitlements for federal politicians with at least two senators pledging to push for changes when parliament resumes.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale and crossbencher Nick Xenophon have vowed to reintroduce legislation to overhaul the rules around expenses.

In an interview with ABC radio, Mr Xenophon said he wanted an independent watchdog to oversee the disclosure of claims and enforce harsher penalties for those who exploit the rules.

“I’d like to think that there’ll be a keener interest on the part of my colleagues on both sides from the major parties to consider this seriously because clearly what they’ve done to date doesn’t work,” he said.

“This is why so many Australians hate so many politicians.”