Here we go again: it’s the Travel Rorts scandal all over again. Do politicians never learn? Or does their towering entitlement complex simply override their caution? Still, with a leader like ‘Airbus Albo’, it’s hardly surprising, I suppose, that junior ministers are diving snout-first into the trough and wallowing for all they’re worth.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has refused to be drawn on her $190,000 trip to New York to spruik the government’s teen social media ban, insisting she and her staff were doing important work at the United Nations to defend Australian children.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t so keen on doing some really important work at home, to make sure that Australians were able to get emergency help when they desperately needed it.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has described herself as “still a new minister” as she faces mounting scrutiny over Triple Zero outages that have been linked to three deaths and left thousands of Australians unable to contact emergency services.
Well, I’m sure that’s a great comfort to the families of the dead, to know that a diversity hire on training wheels was overseeing the nation’s emergency calls network.
But a $100K New York jaunt is just the start of Well’s troughing. The scandal isn’t a good look for the PM, either, and particularly why he personally signed off on a $34,000 on a single return flight. Even a first-class ticket with Qantas would have cost ‘just’ $25,000.
Communications Minister Anika Wells has defended her travel expense record amid allegations she overcharged the taxpayer for personal arrangements including a $250-per-head Paris dinner, as the prime minister confirmed he authorised her $34,000 round-trip flights to the US.
Anthony Albanese on Sunday maintained Ms Wells’s spending was within the rules.
Really?
Later last week it emerged Ms Wells took a three-day trip for $3600 to Adelaide and reportedly attended the birthday party of her friend Connie Blefari – adviser to former prime minister Julia Gillard and the wife of South Australian Health Minister Chris Picton.
It’s a luxurious little club – and you’re not in it.
On Sunday, she was unable to answer whether she had planned her official engagements around that party or whether it was the other way around
She also spent $3000 of taxpayer money so her husband and children could join her for a weekend at the Thredbo ski resort in June, according to the Nine Newspapers.
The Daily Telegraph at the weekend reported she took three trips to Paris in the space of 12 months at a cost of more than $120,000 – including a $1000 dinner for four people.
The Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority’s website states that politicians can claim costs for “family members to travel anywhere in Australia to accompany or join the parliamentarian when they are on parliamentary business”. This begs the question: just what ‘parliamentary business’ was Wells up to at Thredbo?
And who on earth can spend $1200 a day on meals? She claims she was “eating a muesli bar in the car”. Was it wrapped in gold leaf and personally served by a countess?
Then there’s the $1800 trip to the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix. For opposition leader Sussan Ley, all this is kind of personal. A decade ago, Ley was forced to resign as a minister, not because she’d actually broken the rules, but because her conduct just didn’t pass the sniff test. Sure, Ley was technically within the rules when she took time out to buy an investment property while on an official trip to the Gold Coast, but there’s the rules and then there’s what’s right, especially when you’re spending other peoples’ money.
The regulations also demand that any travel “achieve value for money” and ministers take personal responsibility and accountability. “Every effort should be made to reduce the overall cost of the travel to the Australian government while achieving the required travel outcome,” it states.
Wells admitted, in a TV interview that her expenses might look “a certain way”, and some people might have a “gut reaction”. Some? I’d take a plunge and say everyone.
Everyone, that is, but the PM or his cabinet.
Remember, it was current Albanese cabinet minster Pat Conroy who – rightly enough – crucified then-speaker Bronwyn Bishop in 2015, over a $5000 helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong – less than a one-hour drive – for a party fundraiser. Conroy’s words at the time bear repeating:
“The key question here is, is this justified? Can Mrs Bishop walk down to a pub in her electorate and say this is a good use of taxpayers’ money?” – Pat Conroy
Can Anika Wells? Or her boss, Anthony Albanese?
By defending his minister’s grotesque misuse of public money and refusing to take action, Albanese is making this scandal very much his own problem.
