Minister defends trip costs as more details emerge
Call for review as more cost details emerge for Communications Minister Anika Wells’ New York trip to spruik teens’ social media ban.
Source: Sky News Australia
The Coalition wants a review of Communications Minister Anika Wells’ spending as she comes under renewed fire for the cost of taxpayer-funded trips.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has defended Wells’ travel expenses as the Coalition pushes for an independent body to review her spending.
Wells is under fire for a $100,000 bill to fly her and three staff to New York to promote Australia’s teen social media age ban, with further details emerging about trips she took to Paris, Thredbo and Adelaide.
Coalition senator James Paterson said he was bewildered by the cost and said it should be referred to the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for a review.
“That’s an extraordinary expenditure of public money and it has to be publicly justified,” Paterson said on Sunday.
Wells was supposed to travel to the UN General Assembly in Albanese’s jet in September, but was delayed because of the deadly Optus triple-zero outage crisis.
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She accepted the spending would elicit a “gut reaction” in the average Australian but said an independent agency had booked the flights, which were approved within guidelines.
“I had to be in two places at once,” Wells said in a gruelling interview on Sky News.
“I genuinely chose the option where I thought I could discharge my duties in both areas.”
Wells said the Australia’s teenage social media policy was “life changing” and she stood by her decision to go to New York, while Albanese defended the spending as within government guidelines.
“One of the comments I heard from various UN officials was … ‘this is the first time I’ve been to a forum that has changed my mind’,” he told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
Wells, who is also Sports Minister, took three trips to Paris in 12 months at a reported cost of $116,000, for major events – the Rugby World Cup, Paris Olympics and Paris Paralympics.
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She was authorised to spend $6000 on meals for five days, with one dinner reportedly billed for $600.
“I recall sometimes I was eating a muesli bar in the car. These are big days,” Wells said.
“I appreciate it looks a certain way because it’s Paris, but that is where the Games were.”
Opposition industry spokesman Alex Hawke said the spending didn’t pass the pub test, adding the expenses were so high they would “make the royals blush”.
“It simply doesn’t stack up and the Minister’s defences don’t seem to stack up either,” he told Sky News.
“If the Minister is eating a muesli bar … then why is the taxpayer being charged for expensive dinners … if she’s not partaking of them.”
Wells was also questioned about using travel entitlements to go to a friend’s birthday while on a three-day, $3600 work trip to Adelaide in June.
She also spent $3000 on flights and allowances for her husband and children to join her at Thredbo in June 2024 while she had meetings with Paralympics Australia and Adaptive Festival organisers.
Wells acknowledged her family went skiing but said she was there to work and the trip was within the family reunion and travel guidelines.
In 2012, current Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke took a work trip to Uluru and claimed $12,000 so his family could join him.
While within the rules, he repaid $8656 of that trip when details emerged in 2015, admitting it was “beyond community expectations”.
Wells didn’t indicate she would pay back any of the money, saying “I work really hard”. She said she would keep following the rules “as I have in every single instance”.
-AAP
