The Coalition is applying more heat to Sport Minister Anika Wells over flights she claimed for herself and her husband to attend two Boxing Day cricket Test matches in recent years, and several AFL Grand Final events.
The sport minister claimed flights for herself and her husband to the 2022 and 2024 Boxing Day Tests, billing taxpayers her husband’s $1,885 and $984 same-day return flights under “family reunion” entitlements.
Parliamentarians are entitled to claim expenses for some family travel, including up to three business class trips each year Australia-wide for a family member to accompany or join them under “family reunion” provisions.
Meanwhile, a number of other sporting events Ms Wells has attended have come under scrutiny, including the 2022, 2023 and 2024 AFL grand finals, for which Ms Wells received two sponsored tickets on each occasion as a guest of the AFL.
On each occasion, Ms Wells also claimed expenses for family travel that coincided with those grand finals, including a $2,914 claim in 2022, a $3,537 claim for the entire family to travel in 2023 and a $2,127 claim in 2024.
Liberal MP Melissa McIntosh claimed the expenses had exceeded what the community expects of politicians.
“I have to say as a mum, who’s a politician with kids, I understand how hard it is to be away … [but] this has gone beyond what’s acceptable within the guidelines of the [Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority] which we all have to follow,” she said.
Family reunion travel is available where the MP is travelling primarily for parliamentary business, the family members are travelling to accompany or join the MP and the travel is for “facilitating the family life of the parliamentarian”.
Labor MP Jerome Laxale said it was no surprise the sport minister was attending sporting events.
“It’s a pretty dangerous thing to do to start attacking politicians for trying to spend time with their family. Sometimes the only time you can spend with them is at work events,” Mr Laxale told Sky News.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also affirmed on Insiders that Ms Wells’ travel had met guidelines and that he had cleared the minister’s travel to New York for the United Nations General Assembly — a trip that totalled more than $100,000.
Coalition challenges whether trips meet ‘pub test’
But Ms Wells is under pressure to explain whether travel she has claimed has met “community expectations”.
Liberal senator Jane Hume told Sky News the trips appeared to be “taking advantage” of rules for MPs.
“Anika Wells’ judgement is being called into question. The rules are there for a very good reason, but during a cost-of-living crisis, at a time when trust in politicians is at an all-time low, this really doesn’t meet community expectations,” Senator Hume said.
“I’m surprised that it took the prime minister so long to come out and say that he had approved those nearly $100,000 airfares to New York. Now we are hearing there is more — trips to the cricket, trips to the Grand Prix with her husband, trips to Thredbo with children. This does feel like minister Wells is taking advantage of the rules.”
Albanese tries to explain the inexplicable defending Wells’s ski trip
Alongside travel to the cricket and the flights to New York which first drew scrutiny, Ms Wells has also faced questions over a two-night trip to Thredbo this year where she was joined by her family and who Ms Wells said went skiing while she attended a Paralympics Australia event and convened a press conference.
The Coalition has compared Ms Wells’ claims to a previous instance a decade ago where Labor MP Tony Burke charged taxpayers more than $12,000 for a four-day trip to Uluru with his family, which included business class flights.
While Mr Burke insisted the trip met the rules for claiming expenses, he eventually conceded it was “beyond community expectations”.
The opposition has also noted the ministerial code of conduct obliges ministers not to be “wasteful or extravagant” with public resources, and to observe standards “worthy of the Australian people”.
Liberal senator Maria Kovacic said the government should be more considerate of the strained economic environment.
“We have a problem with inflation because of government expenditure … that’s something the Reserve Bank is saying,” Senator Kovacic told Sky News.
“Clearly, there needs to be a discussion around whether this actually does fall within the rules, and I think minister Wells should self-refer to [the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority].”
The Coalition says an independent review of Ms Wells’ expense claims would be able to remove any doubt over whether the minister’s trips met guidelines.