While the Coalition is mounting a political argument about Wells’ judgment calls on several of her expenses, several opposition MPs have also spent thousands taking family members across the country while they attend events.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, for example, charged taxpayers $6581 for family flights between Perth Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin and Newcastle over a week in April this year as she travelled across the country for election campaign events. She is the eighth-highest spender on family travel in the parliament.
Don Farrell, Fatima Payman, Patrick Gorman and Andrew Willcox have spent more than $100,000 on family travel since the start of the Albanese government in 2022. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, Sam Mooy
Nationals MP Anne Webster, from the Victorian regional electorate of Mallee, ranked 30th in family travel spending and spent $2976 for a family member to accompany her for a four-night trip to Perth for the World Transplant Games in April 2023, where she also claimed $1676 in travel allowance. Webster attended as a co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Organ Donation group.
On a separate three-night trip to Sydney in October 2023, Webster claimed $2253 in family flights, but only claimed one night travel allowance for parliamentary business after attending a migration conference. Webster’s office declined to comment.
A minister earns around $400,000 a year, while a backbencher’s base salary is nearly $240,000.
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Under family reunion rules, federal MPs are allowed three return business class flights a year for family members flying between the MPs’ home base and a city other than Canberra, and the value of nine business class flights to Canberra. There is also an allowance of three return economy flights per child to Canberra, and some flexibility to the rules allows ministers to claim more.
The measures are designed to support politicians’ family lives, given the extent of their travel, but MPs have discretion over how they are applied. Those who have claimed the least on family travel include independent MP Dai Le ($170) and NSW Labor Senator Jenny McAllister ($398).
Cabinet ministers Katy Gallagher, who is Canberra-based, and western Sydney MP Chris Bowen have not made any claims to the family allowance since Labor came to government in 2022.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke charged $1528 in family travel. Burke repaid $8600 in flights in 2020, saying the expenses had not met community expectations, after charging taxpayers $12,708 for his family to join him in Uluru in 2012.
The Labor cabinet ministers who spent the most on family travel were Farrell ($116,306), West Australian minister Madeleine King ($76,692), Northern Territory minister Malarndirri McCarthy ($75,717), Albanese ($75,321), Rowland ($52,600) and Wells ($43,026).
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Farrell, who charged $2094 for a family flight to Uluru for a free sunset dinner, said reunion rules were an important part of parliament’s framework. “[They allow] 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.”
But Liberal MP Steven Kennedy, who has claimed $600 in family allowance since joining parliament last year, said it made sense to limit family flights to economy class, before suggesting the entitlements could be scrapped altogether.
“I have some more radical views on what you could do. I think you could get rid of all [family] travel or gifts,” he told Sky News.
Kennedy said he didn’t want to demonise family travel for rural-based MPs because it allowed them to see their children more often, but worried such entitlements could encourage people into politics for the wrong reasons.
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