Parliament is diminished by the entitlements scandal that saw the Speaker of the House of Representatives forced to resign, according to a Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic.

Associate Professor Dominic O'Sullivan, the Associate Head of the CSU School of Humanities and Social Sciences and associate professor in political science in Bathurst, said, "This affair has certainly been damaging to the Abbott Government, but also to Parliament.

Professor O'Sullivan said the Prime Minister should have acted sooner to distance himself from the Speaker, Mrs Bronwyn Bishop, rather than defend her by offering the public weak justifications for her travel claims.

"The Prime Minister's actions, and the Speaker's taxpayer helicopter trip from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal Party fundraising event, are such glaring anomalies in people's minds, following as they do, the earlier grave declarations to the Australian public by the Treasurer, Mr Joe Hockey, MP, that 'the age of entitlement is over'.

"There is a contradiction, here, that makes it difficult for the government to explain measures such as the $80 billion cut to health expenditure proposed in the last Budget," Professor O'Sullivan said.

Professor O'Sullivan said that being a Member of Parliament is a difficult job; very long hours are expected and there are long periods away from home, but these conditions are not unique and Members and Senators are well paid, so public tolerance for a sense of entitlement that the Treasurer says the wider public should not have, is rather low.

"By the time they are elected to Parliament, candidates know what the job entails," he said.

"People want reform of the system; they want transparency and accountability.

"With a federal election within view, and the Coalition in panic over its electoral standing, the expected appointment today of a new Speaker of the House of Representatives and the reform of parliamentarians' entitlements are significant tests for a Prime Minister who is still vulnerable," Professor O'Sullivan said.