Albanese defends Wells after minister charged taxpayers to take family to ski resort

Wells faces multiple expenses questions

Wells has been under fire since Wednesday after revelations she charged taxpayers more than $100,000 for flights to New York to showcase Australia’s social media ban.

This was swiftly followed by reports she had used her travel entitlements for trips to Adelaide, where she attended a friend’s birthday party, and three trips to France in one year in her role as sports minister to attend the Rugby World Cup and the Olympics.

The furore over Wells’ use of expenses has overshadowed the minister’s attempts to promote new laws that restrict under 16s’ use of social media, which come into effect this Wednesday.

Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority figures show the minister claimed $844 of taxpayer-funded travel allowance to stay at a resort in Thredbo over the two nights, and then claimed another $318 to stay in Canberra on Sunday night citing “parliamentary duties”.

Her flights from Brisbane to Canberra, the nearest major airport to the Thredbo resort, cost taxpayers another $294.32.

Wells was accompanied by her husband, Finn McCarthy, and two of her three children under “family reunion” rules that allow MPs to reunite with their families when travelling for work.

Taxpayers spent another $1389.18 on flights so her family could join her for the weekend at the snow, with Wells’ husband posting pictures of their children on the skiing trip a couple of days later on social media.

All told, the two-day trip to the ski fields cost taxpayers $2845.50, but a government spokesman defended the minister’s use of travel and entitlements, saying “the travel was in accordance with the guidelines”.

But Wells’ use of the family reunion rules is strikingly similar to a trip the current Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke took to Uluru back in April 2012, when he was the environment minister, and claimed $12,000 in allowances and flights so his family could join him on that trip.

Details of Burke’s trip emerged in 2015, soon after the Bronwyn Bishop “choppergate” scandal. At the time, Burke insisted, like Wells, that he had not breached the rules but he did admit the trip was “beyond community expectations” of what MPs should be claiming in taxpayer-funded expenses.

Burke repaid $8656.48 of that trip – the cost of four airfares – five years later, in 2020.

There is no suggestion that Wells contravened the rules on the trip to Thredbo because of her official engagements, but the expenses claims raise fresh questions about her use of entitlements and whether they are in line with “community expectations”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked last week on the ABC’s 730 program if Wells’ trip to New York passed the pub test, and argued: “That’s for others to judge. But from my point of view, it’s official travel. It’s well within the guidelines.”

The rules for what expenses and allowances ministers can claim are governed by the Department of Finance’s “dominant purpose” test.

That test states that expense claims can be made for one of four reasons – when an MP or minister is undertaking parliamentary duties, electorate duties, party political duties or official duties.

On its website, the department states that “the dominant purpose test asks whether you would have undertaken the activity or incurred or claimed the expense, allowance or other public resource but for your parliamentary business”.

The rules on reunions allow family members to travel from their home base to Canberra, with a maximum annual cost limit set as the equivalent value of nine business-class return airfares to Canberra for an MP’s partner, plus three economy-class return airfares to Canberra for each dependent child.

Parliament’s Senate estimates committee heard last week that Wells, a staffer and a public servant had spent almost $100,000 on flights to attend the United Nations General Assembly and another $70,000 to host an event that spruiked the government’s teen social media ban earlier this year.

After a difficult appearance at the National Press Club last week during which Wells avoided directly answering questions about her New York trip, The Australian Financial Review then revealed the under-pressure minister took a three-day taxpayer-funded $3600 trip in June to Adelaide.

During that trip, Wells attended a friend’s birthday party as well as official meetings with state ministers.

On Friday, the Daily Telegraph reported Wells took three trips in one year to the Olympics-hosting French capital, Paris, in her capacity as sports minister, at a cost of more than $120,000.

The opposition has been sharply critical of Wells’ use of expenses, with Opposition Leader Sussan Ley declaring last week that the New York trip simply “does not pass the pub test for any struggling Australian family”.

In 2017, Ley had to resign as health minister because of her use of expenses and entitlements after a trip to the Gold Coast, when she undertook official ministerial business but also purchased a luxury Gold Coast apartment.

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