Anthony Albanese has sidestepped calls for reform or an inquiry into politicians\u2019 expenses and travel perks, saying he is more focused on the under-16s social media ban than growing community outrage over MPs using taxpayer funds to fly their spouses to football games, cricket matches and exclusive dinners.<\/p>\n
At a press conference held at a school in Canberra to promote the under-16s social media ban, Albanese was asked repeatedly about Guardian Australia\u2019s reporting that senior politicians like himself, Anika Wells and Don Farrell enjoy essentially \u201cunlimited\u201d entitlements to fly their spouses around the country<\/a>. Twice he said: \u201cI haven\u2019t changed the rule.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been in place for some time and we haven\u2019t changed the rules. We haven\u2019t added to any entitlements,\u201d Albanese said. He declined multiple times to answer whether his Labor government would now change those rules, saying \u201cI\u2019m not the finance minister\u201d.<\/p>\n Wells, the minister for communications and sport, has referred her own spending \u2013 including family travel costs to bring her husband to football grand finals<\/a>, cricket Test matches and the Formula One \u2013 to the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for review. Senior Labor sources told the Guardian the government would likely wait for the IPEA to conduct its audit of Wells\u2019 travel claims before taking any further action. An imminent broader review of the rules was not expected.<\/p>\n The IPEA will look specifically at Wells\u2019 travel claims. Previous audit reports on spending have not made recommendations on the travel rules themselves, only about specific examples being investigated.<\/p>\n It is unclear how long the Wells review will take. Previous audits of politicians have often taken several months to complete, and up to a year for the findings to be made public. The IPEA was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n There are some concerns in Labor about how the issue is being viewed by the public. One Labor MP said they had been approached by constituents frustrated over the use of entitlements.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been fielding inquiries in my electorate all week \u2026 people are really upset,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n All federal parliamentarians are eligible to claim the equivalent of nine business-class trips between their home city and Canberra, as well as three economy-equivalent trips to other locations in Australia. However, as Guardian Australia revealed on Thursday, an explanatory document about the regulations says spousal travel for ministers is \u201crelevantly unlimited\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Albanese and other ministers have repeatedly stated that travel expenses are regulated \u201cat arm\u2019s length\u201d by the IPEA, which is an independent body. But the regulations<\/a> putting limits on parliamentarians\u2019 spending, set in 2017 under the former Turnbull Coalition government, are \u201cissued by the authority of the minister for finance\u201d. They could be changed by the federal government of the day, with the relevant power in the current Labor government resting with Farrell, the special minister of state.<\/p>\n The Guardian revealed this week Farrell had charged taxpayers $9,000 over three years for family travel costs<\/a> after being invited to football games, tennis matches and an exclusive dinner at Uluru. Albanese also charged taxpayers about $2,800 for family travel costs<\/a> on weekends when he was given free tickets to the AFL grand final, rugby league State of Origin and Australian Open tennis.<\/p>\n The federal opposition and crossbenchers have backed a review or examination of spending rules<\/a>.<\/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 The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, accused Albanese of having \u201cfailed the basic test of leadership\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of standing up for taxpayers, he has closed ranks around a minister accused of wasting public money. When integrity is tested, this government reaches for the curtain every time, choosing secrecy over accountability,\u201d she said on social media.<\/p>\n The prime minister conceded that \u201ccommunity expectations are important\u201d around political spending. But Albanese defended family reunion travel entitlements as important to help encourage people, especially those with young families, to enter politics.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my son was a bub \u2026 I used to bring him down to parliament when parliament sat. That made it possible for me to do my job when he was a bub,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are rules that have been set for some period of time \u2026 in terms of family reunion, to enable people to actually engage with their partners.\u201d<\/p>\n Albanese did not indicate any plans to change travel expense rules. Instead, he said the social media ban was his priority \u2013 and predicted the change would be among \u201cthe five biggest things that we did\u201d in the tenure of his government.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019ve been focused on this week, to be frank, is one of the biggest reforms that we will do in the entire time that we\u2019re in office. That has been totally my focus. My focus is not on entitlements and the finance minister\u2019s rules. To be frank, my focus has been on this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Albanese has sidestepped calls for reform or an inquiry into politicians\u2019 expenses and travel perks, saying he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-341424","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\/341424","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=341424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}