Anthony Albanese has defended his decision to sign off on a $100,000 trip to New York City for Anika Wells and two others to spruik Australia’s social media ban to global leaders at the UN general assembly.
The minister’s travel entitlements have come under intense scrutiny in the past week with the Nine newspapers reporting on Sunday that Wells’ family went on a skiing trip to Thredbo in June using taxpayer-funded family reunion entitlements while the minister was there for an official event.
Wells defended this and her New York trip on Sunday as Albanese faced questions.
He said the communications minister’s short visit on the sidelines of the UN was helpful in getting other countries “in our corner” against powerful and influential tech companies.
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Wells had been expected to join Albanese on a flight to New York on a Saturday in September but a decision was made to delay her attendance as news broke of three deaths related to a triple-zero outage during an Optus network upgrade.
Albanese said the government decided Wells would stay in Australia to deal with the incident but he later signed off on the last-minute commercial flights for her, a staffer and a departmental official to attend the UN events.
“When you’ve got Australia, a middle power taking on these global giants … it has helped that we have others in our corner now, rather than the potential, which was there for us to be isolated by the these giants, the big tech companies who have a lot of power and influence,” Albanese told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday.
“I didn’t get all the receipts … this will come as a shock, David [Speers, Insiders host], but I don’t, you know, ring up and make bookings myself.”
Wells said it was a “really tricky situation” but welcomed the scrutiny, adding that everything booked and paid for was within the entitlement rules.
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.
The communications department also paid US$45,744 ($70,000) to host an event titled “Protecting children in the digital age” at the UN general assembly, in the delegates’ dining room. Wells also held meetings with senior executives at Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, and attended several events and panels.
Wells said her visit to the UN general assembly was critical to winning allies for Australia’s world-leading social media ban for under-16s due to come into effect this Wednesday.
“I had to be in two places at once. It was a really tricky situation. I appreciate that everybody’s going to have an opinion on which of those three options I should have taken,” she told Sky News on Sunday.
“I genuinely chose the option where I thought I could discharge my duties in both areas.”
Wells said she “used my family reunion entitlement within the guidelines, as every parliamentarian can do” for her family’s trip to Thredbo.
Also in June, Wells travelled to Adelaide for official events but also attended a friend’s birthday, as reported by the Australian Financial Review.
Parliamentarians are entitled to claim allowances for official parliamentary business, according to the finance department’s advice. This can include commercial and charter flights, hotel accommodation, as well as the government’s chauffeur services to and from official events.
The advice says the dominant purpose of these claims must be for parliamentary business and that politicians should be prepared to publicly justify the use of public resources.
The body who oversees politicians’ expenses, the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority, was established after the now opposition leader (then health minister), Sussan Ley, came under fire for buying a $795,000 apartment from a Liberal party donor while on a taxpayer-funded trip to the Gold Coast in 2017.
