The Future Fund spent $20,000 to send the CEO\u2019s then-executive assistant on a scoping trip to assess hotels in the US and negotiate hotel rates, Senate estimates has been told.<\/p>\n
It comes as the government is also under fire for charging taxpayers nearly $100,000 to send the communications minister, Anika Wells, her staff member and a department official to the US during the UN general assembly.<\/p>\n
The chief executive of the Future Fund, Raphael Arndt, confirmed the trip to Senate estimates on Monday night, one of two overseas trips his former EA was sent on, and revealed he had separately dined at Disney\u2019s exclusive Disney Club 33 to learn about the entertainment giant\u2019s \u201ccultural induction\u201d for its teams.<\/p>\n
Membership to Disney\u2019s Club 33 is by invitation only and reportedly costs tens of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
The ACT senator David Pocock<\/a> questioned why the hotel negotiations could not have been done over the phone, asking \u201cwas there a report done from that? Or what, was she checking the firmness of beds?\u201d<\/p>\n Arndt said the rates negotiation had led to annual savings of $30,000. The scoping trip included the former EA (who was not named) and a second person, who both flew business class.<\/p>\n \u201cThe view was one, we wanted to make sure we had the appropriate setup for hotels, including whether they were in safe places within cities,\u201d Arndt said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd secondly, that the relationship with the hotel managers would help with the negotiation of rates, and that\u2019s what transpired \u2026 my understanding is we\u2019ve realised more savings than that as a result of that project.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n The Future Fund was set up in 2006 and oversees a portfolio of $261bn.<\/p>\n Arndt said the trip occurred after the Covid pandemic, leading Pocock to again question why the negotiation could not have taken place over Zoom.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you ask the average punter out there whether the Future Fund needed to send someone \u2026 to go and check out some hotels, they\u2019d probably say yeah, nah,\u201d Pocock said.<\/p>\n On a separate trip, Arndt dined at Disney\u2019s Club 33, which he said was to study Disney and the Disney University\u2019s \u201ccultural inductions\u201d while the Future Fund establishes an academy to teach \u201cculture\u201d.<\/p>\n The Future Fund\u2019s 2025-26 corporate plan states that the academy will help \u201csupercharge our culture\u201d and \u201cdevelop great leaders\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the peer groups that we identified in the study was Disney and the Disney University,\u201d Arndt said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey do cultural induction for their teams in a way that seems quite effective. And so we organised for some meetings with a person who was involved in that activity, and had a tour of the facility, which included lunch at the location that you are referring to.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the government faced questions on the bill to taxpayers to send Wells, her deputy chief of staff and a department official to the US in September. Wells had originally been expected to fly with Anthony Albanese earlier in the week, but delayed her travel to deal with the triple zero outages.<\/p>\n Communications minister Anika Wells speaks to the media in New York in September. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/AAP<\/p>\n Taxpayers were charged $95,000 for the three flights. Wells and her staffer also claimed US$2,985 each in accommodation while the departmental official claimed US$5,970 for accommodation. All three claimed US$1,348 each in ground transport.<\/p>\n The communications department also paid US$45,744 ($70,000) to host an event titled \u201cProtecting children in the digital age\u201d at the UN general assembly, in the delegates\u2019 dining room. Wells also held meetings with senior executives at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, and attended several events and panels.<\/p>\n Wells defended the spending at the National Press Club on Wednesday, and said the trip was \u201cincredibly important\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason you know all those things is we\u2019re transparent about them, we\u2019ll disclose them and we\u2019ll continue to disclose them \u2026 That event fuelled a global momentum in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n The Liberal senator James McGrath said the cost was \u201cdisappointing\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Australians are facing a cost of living crisis, they don\u2019t want to find out that federal Labor ministers are spending $35,000 travelling to and from New York, and that\u2019s just the minister\u2019s air fares.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Future Fund spent $20,000 to send the CEO\u2019s then-executive assistant on a scoping trip to assess hotels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-324974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}