Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is backing Communications Minister Anika Wells’ use of parliamentary entitlements while refusing to consider changes to family travel rules, as fresh information emerges of her using taxpayer funds to attend Labor fundraisers.
Albanese instead sought on Wednesday to turn the blowtorch onto Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s controversial history of using travel perks, as the saga expanded to include Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and other Coalition MPs.
Minister for Communications and Minister for Sport Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Ley resigned from cabinet in 2017 after using a taxpayer-funded trip to purchase an apartment on Queensland’s Gold Coast, a point repeatedly raised by the prime minister in a morning media blitz intended to shift focus from his own minister.
“These rules were put in place, of course, under the former government after the now opposition leader travelled to the Gold Coast … and ended up having to resign,” Albanese said, declining to back calls to overhaul MPs’ spending on family travel even as days of scrutiny on Wells complicated the first day of the government’s world-first teen social media ban.
According to senior government sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Albanese’s refusal to consider changing family reunion rules and his decision to attack Ley reflect a strategy of wanting to keep Wells in cabinet as her expenses are audited, while muddying the opposition in hopes the scandal slowly simmers down.
Liberal MPs Simon Kennedy and Melissa McIntosh have both called for family reunion entitlements to be reined in, although McIntosh and colleagues Jacinta Price, Anne Webster, Kerryne Liddle, and others have also come under scrutiny for their spending on family travel.
Expenses data shows Price took a seven-day trip to Sydney last December, where she claimed return flights for a family member, but only claimed two nights of travel allowance on parliamentary business, flying out five days later.
Price also charged taxpayers for a family member’s flight to Adelaide and return to Alice Springs after a Canberra sitting week this year, where she attended an event with South Australia MP Tony Pasin. Price did not respond to requests for comment.
Liberal senator Kerryne Liddle charged taxpayers for family flights on three interstate weekend trips last year. She claimed four nights’ travel allowance for a trip to Sydney last April, four nights’ travel allowance for a trip to Sydney last June, and two nights’ travel allowance on a four-day trip to Tasmania last August, charging taxpayers to fly a family member with her each time.
Her work schedules during those visits weren’t clear based on public information, and a spokesman for Liddle did not explain them when asked, but said all travel was within established guidelines.
The perks saga on Wednesday expanded to the Greens, with Hanson-Young revealed by The Australian to have spent $50,000 to bring her husband, prominent federal government lobbyist Ben Oquist, to Canberra for sitting weeks.
But Labor continues to be dogged by new information on Wells, who is far from the biggest spender among parliamentarians but has been criticised for repeatedly bringing her husband to sporting events, billing the taxpayer for a trip that included a friends’ birthday, and spending thousands on meals and expensive drinks on a trip to the Paris Olympics as sports minister.
This masthead reported on Tuesday that she charged taxpayers more than $2000 for flights to Sydney when she was due to attend the Federal Labor Business Forum, a Labor Party fundraiser, in a potential breach of the guidelines that govern the use of parliamentary entitlements. Under the rules, entitlements must be used for the “dominant purpose” of parliamentary business, which does not include political party events.
The Australian Financial Review reported on Wednesday that Albanese held a meeting of his full ministry hours before that fundraiser, meaning Wells and a slew of other ministers could claim the trip to Sydney as a work expense. Wells spent the day in Sydney but pulled out of the event at the last minute.
Family reunion travel rules
The obligations of MPs when determining whether they can claim family reunion expenses.
- Dominant purpose: Under family reunion rules, an MP’s family can accompany or join them at Commonwealth expense while they are conducting parliamentary business. Travel must be for the “dominant purpose” of facilitating the family life of the parliamentarian.
- Value for money: MPs are required to use public resources for parliamentary business in a way that achieves value for money. MPs can have family members travel to Canberra under a cost-based limit per year, and can claim up to three return business-class airfares for family to travel elsewhere in Australia.
- Good faith: MPs need to act ethically and in good faith when using, or accounting for, public resources. They must not seek to disguise personal or commercial business as parliamentary business.
- Personal responsibility and accountability: An MP is personally responsible and accountable for their use of public resources and should consider how the public would perceive their use of these resources.
- Conditions: An MP must not make a claim, or incur an expense, in relation to a public resource if they have not met all of the conditions for its provision.
This masthead has since learned that Wells billed taxpayers $2400 in August last year and about the same amount in 2022 for travel to the business forum, Labor’s chief fundraising event.
Asked about the 2022 and 2024 events, a government spokesman said: “The travel was within the guidelines and the minister was on official duties.”
Albanese defended the family reunion rules on the basis that they allowed parents with young families to be involved in politics.
“The parliament has changed, and that’s a good thing,” he said. “Minister Wells, for example, has three young children. She gave birth to twins while in office. I think it’s a good thing that parliament is more representative than it used to be. People have a long time away from their families, from their children and from their partners.”
Albanese is the seventh-highest user of family reunion entitlements in the parliament.
McIntosh, Wells’ Coalition counterpart as communications spokeswoman, came under pressure earlier this week for her own travel from Sydney to Queensland in 2023 when she attended work events at the same time as her son, who taxpayers funded to join her on the trip, competed in a judo event.
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