Farrell charges for hundreds of family flights
Farrell charged taxpayers more than $116,000 for family travel since 2022, according to Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority data. This includes flying a family member to Uluru, where he had been gifted tickets to a Wintjiri Wiru Sunset Dinner in August 2024.
The flights that coincided with the dinner cost $2093.65 for a return trip from Adelaide to Uluru via Sydney. Other family travel matched dates that Farrell had been gifted tickets, including return flights for a family member to Sydney, costing $1385.21, at the same time as opera La Boheme at the Sydney Opera House. Farrell had been given a double pass and hospitality, according to his register of interests.
Minister for Trade and Tourism, and Special Minister of State Don Farrell.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Farrell defended the expenses, saying they were within the guidelines and that the rules allowed for carers and single parents to become politicians.
“The family reunion provisions are an important feature of our framework, allowing a diverse range of members and senators to represent their communities in our nation’s parliament,” he said in a statement.
“Our parliament would be a lesser place if it weren’t for the mechanisms that allow young mothers, single parents, those with families, and those with caring responsibilities to serve as elected members.”
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Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke, in 2020, repaid the cost of flights for his family to join him on a trip to Uluru in 2012 because, while within the rules, he said the expenses “did not meet community expectations”.
Under the family reunion rules, federal MPs are allowed up to three return business class flights per year for family members flying between the MP’s home base and a city other than Canberra, and the value of nine business class flights to Canberra, though there is some flexibility to the rules that allows ministers to claim more.
Coalition MP calls for Wells to resign as minister
Wells has defended the flights and expenses as within the rules, but has endured ongoing criticism for the nature of her trips and a lack of judgment in flying her children and husband to Thredbo for a ski trip, and billing taxpayers thousands to fly her husband to three AFL grand finals and two Boxing Day Test matches. On most occasions, her husband flew home to Brisbane on the same day.
Wells’ expenses first came under scrutiny last Wednesday when it was revealed in an answer to a Senate estimates committee that she billed taxpayers almost $100,000 to fly herself, a staffer and a public servant to New York in September for the United Nations General Assembly.
Nationals senator Matt Canavan on Tuesday called for Wells to resign because though she may not have broken any rules, there was a pattern of misjudgment that did not meet community expectations.
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.
“I think there’s too many yellow cards here from Anika Wells. I think she needs to be shown a red,” he told Sky News.
Canavan said getting a Comcar to wait seven hours at the tennis was “ridiculous”, and other ministers had been forced out of parliamentary positions for less, including former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley.
“You’re spending other people’s money, not your own. So I don’t think Anika Wells, as a minister of the crown, has shown any care and diligence here to make sure her spending … meets that value for money test,” Canavan said.
“The question now is to the prime minister, what standards do you have? Do you apply any discipline to your ministers to pay a price if they’re not seen to be spending money in a value sense?”
This masthead revealed on Monday that Wells charged taxpayers almost $1000 to have a government-funded Comcar wait seven hours for her while she attended the Australian Open tennis final in January 2023, and the Australian Financial Review reported on Tuesday she claimed another $765 for a chauffeur-driven car while attending the Magic Millions Race Day on the Gold Coast in January 2024.
Coalition figures have challenged the government’s response, saying the travel was outside what Australians expect.
“Whether things are in the guidelines or not, it’s always up to the individual parliamentarian to justify his or her expenses. That’s always been the case,” shadow treasurer Ted O’Brien told ABC Radio National.
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He called the judgment of Wells and the prime minister into question for claiming the expenses were appropriate during a cost-of-living crisis.
“What we see here is the prime minister defending a minister who is spending money that is hard to justify in the public eye,” O’Brien said.
“Saying that this level of spending is fine – that goes to his judgment.”
O’Brien told Sky News Wells’ expenses should be audited by the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority.
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Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino defended Wells on Tuesday, and said the family reunion entitlements process was transparent.
“The community has a right to expect that expenses are expended in a careful way, and an appropriate way,” Mulino told Sky News.
“The purpose of any trip needs to be a work trip and that I think is the standard against which it’s judged. And I think that that would have applied in all [Wells’] instances.”
Asked whether the expenses were appropriate, Mulino said: “It’s not really for me to be running through each action of each member of parliament.”
Read more on Wells’ expenses
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