Bronwyn Bishop has some chutzpah. "Thank you for coming," she welcomed a media scrum on Saturday. "And if I can say I've just left the important Warringah Rats versus Sydney University football game and I'm pleased to say I was offered a position in the front row forwards."

The Speaker and northern beaches MP did not pack down with the Rats because, as she said, she instead needed to convene this "proper press conference so we can discuss the issues at hand".

Before a single question was asked, Bishop volunteered that she had taken two flights on fixed-wing aircraft that may have delivered her to Liberal Party fund-raisers, in addition to the $5227 helicopter ride from Melbourne to Geelong, an extravagance for which she will now refund the taxpayer.

Bishop will not provide details of her trips to Nowra and Young last year because, her spokesman says, it would be improper to comment while the Finance Department investigates them – at her request. However, Bishop says her charter allowance permits her to reach her speaking engagements in the most cost-efficient and time-efficient way.

Last November, Bishop arrived in a timely manner for what the Liberal member for Hume, Angus Taylor, described as a "rock star" reception at the Young Services Club.  Almost 200 people paid $50 a head for the Liberal Party function, where the keynote speaker discussed her role as, well, Speaker. She "highlighted just how unique and precious our parliamentary system is in Australia", Taylor told The Young Witness at the time. He did not return Fairfax Media's calls on Sunday. It is unclear whether Bishop had official duties in Young other than the party fund-raiser.

She also attended a Liberal fund-raiser at Gabby's at Berry, north of Nowra, late last year.

The member for the surrounding seat of Gilmore, Ann Sudmalis, said she could not be sure of the details until she returned to her office on Monday. But she recalled that Bishop had attended other forums while in her electorate, including one about access to the pension for people on the land.

Bishop, with all the effrontery of a rugby front-rower, packed down against another scrum of journalists on Sunday.  She had been scheduled to unveil an Anzac memorial in Hyde Park with Premier Mike Baird.

Perhaps Baird decided discretion was the better part of valour, but they did not conduct a joint news conference, as might be customary.

Refusing to say sorry for her chopper flight, Bishop said: "The best form of apology is to repay the money."

She agreed it was a "grandiosity" but insisted she acted within the rules. She noted that Labor MPs would be flying courtesy of the taxpayer to their ALP conference in Melbourne next weekend. But travel to party political conferences is specifically sanctioned by the Remuneration Tribunal. Travel to party political fund-raisers is not. The tribunal does not mention such travel, perhaps because the answer is obvious.

In any case, it was a cheap shot from the Speaker, who is meant to stand above the party-political ruck and maul. She never has.

This is the Speaker who reserves her catapult almost exclusively for the eviction of MPs on the opposition benches; who holds Liberal Party fund-raisers in her Speaker's suite; who carries the Prime Minister's lance onto the set of Q&A to skewer her fellow panellist, the Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs.

And there she was scrapping again on Sky News on Sunday morning, before her walk in the park, dismissing her travel scandal as a political beat-up. "And I'm very sorry it's taken the heat off [Labor leader Bill] Shorten and his triple-whammy carbon tax bill."

Bishop has Tony Abbott's confidence, the Prime Minister insisted on the weekend, even if Joe Hockey says her chopper jaunt failed the "sniff test"?

"Joe says some funny things sometimes, doesn't he?" Bishop sniffed back on Saturday. "I think he said poor people don't drive cars or something …"

Hockey crash-tackled her on Sunday:  "I haven't heard of anyone who has taken a helicopter to a fund-raising event."

It's hot. Hockey understands how on-the-nose Bishop is to voters.

The Warringah Rats, meanwhile, went down to Sydney Uni. Perhaps they needed Bishop as prop, after all.

But for how long can the member for Warringah, Tony Abbott, ignore the demands to dispatch the front row rat in his ranks.

Lest she cost him the bigger game.