Albanese bristles at expenses questions, Wells faces having to hand over metadata

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ducked responsibility for the widening MPs’ expenses saga and claimed he was not in charge of the rules, while Communications Minister Anika Wells can be compelled to hand over her metadata and submit to interviews in the watchdog’s probe of her spending.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley opened the door to a bipartisan overhaul of family travel perks on Thursday as she and her senior shadow ministers said they were open to changes, but the prime minister is holding firm in the face of calls to pare back entitlements.

Asked about a finance minister’s regulation allowing unlimited spousal travel perks for senior MPs, Albanese said: “I’m not the finance minister. I haven’t changed the rule.”

In a testy press conference in Canberra on Thursday, Albanese was grilled about revelations that Special Minister of State Don Farrell, and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, charged 136 and 78 spouse flights, respectively, to the taxpayer since 2022.

Albanese distanced himself by repeatedly raising Ley’s misuse of travel expenses in 2017 and noted multiple times that the finance minister oversaw expenses, even though Farrell is the minister with most responsibility over the entitlements scheme.

“I don’t influence that from the top,” Albanese said.

“What I’ve been focused on this week, to be frank, is one of the biggest reforms that we will do in the entire time that we’re in office [the social media ban]. My focus is not on entitlements and the finance minister’s rules.”

The focus on politicians’ perks – triggered last week by revelations that almost $100,000 was spent on flights for Wells, a staffer and a senior public servant to travel to New York – has taken the gloss off Labor’s world-first social media ban and raised questions about its probity before next week’s cost-cutting budget update.

The Coalition seized on Albanese’s remarks, with finance spokesman James Paterson saying the prime minister was “failing the test of leadership” and “full of excuses”. Ley said she was “always open to looking at the rules” governing MPs’ expenses.

While focus has been on Wells and her judgment in charging taxpayers for flights while attending birthdays and bringing family members to in-demand events, the biggest users of family reunion perks come from across the political spectrum.

All politicians are allowed up to three return business class flights a year for family members flying between the MPs’ home base and a city other than Canberra, as well as the value of nine business class flights to Canberra.

But it emerged on Thursday that dozens of senior office holders are exempt from any spending limits on reunion flights. They include ministers, the Senate president, House speaker, the opposition leader and their deputy in each house.

Wells moved to stem the bleeding on Tuesday by referring her spending the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority. The independent watchdog has confirmed the probe with Wells’ office in the past 24 hours, according to two sources familiar with the agency not authorised to speak publicly.

The authority, whose leaders include former special minister of state Gary Gray, has the power to interview ministers and others about events they claimed travel entitlements to be at, check calendars, and inspect metadata to determine if work events were placed around social events already locked into the calendar.

One source said the probe would likely take months and that Albanese would only consider changing the rules if the agency found Wells was exploiting loopholes.

Labor and Coalition MPs said privately that Hanson-Young’s use of $50,000 to bring her husband, prominent federal government lobbyist Ben Oquist, to Canberra for sitting weeks appeared to be the worst example to date. Hanson-Young pulled out of a media appearance on Thursday and has not responded to the reporting of the expenses. Hanson-Young was contacted for comment.

The current parliamentary entitlements scheme was brought in by then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, an overhaul spurred partly by Ley’s use of taxpayer funds to travel the Gold Coast to buy a property. The move required legislative change, while Ley resigned from the frontbench and repaid the cost of the flights.

Senior politicians with an uncapped spousal travel allowance have billed taxpayers more than $660,000 since the start of the Albanese government.

Travel for senior office holders’ spouses, including de facto partners, is “relevantly unlimited in respect of total expenses claimable each year”, an explanatory document of the regulation reads.

Spouses can travel for family reunion purposes, to represent their partner in an official capacity, and to attend engagements where they have been invited as the spouse of a senior office holder – for example, if they are invited to speak at a function because they are the partner of an MP. Senior office holders’ partners also have an uncapped private vehicle allowance.

Farrell, who as special minister of state is in charge of MP entitlements, has claimed the most – $116,306 – in family travel of the eligible politicians since the 2022 election. Minister for Resources and the Northern Territory Madeleine King had the next highest claim, at $76,692.

The biggest spender among the outer ministry was Minister for Veterans’ Affairs of Australia Matt Keogh, with a sum of $47,619. The cap exemption also extends to Senate president Sue Lines, who has claimed $46,886. Both Keogh and Lines are from Western Australia, which would increase the costs of any travel.

Together, the senior office holders have charged taxpayers $666,504 for family travel since the start of the Albanese government.

Albanese himself has spent $75,321 on family travel entitlements since he became prime minister.

Read more on the expenses saga

• PM refuses to budge: Albanese digs in as more ministers caught up
• Comcars and sports events: Wells billed taxpayers for car to wait hours at tennis, flew husband to Boxing Day Tests, grand finals
• Across the parliament: The MPs who spent more than $100,000 on family travel
• Matthew Knott sketch: This week was supposed to be a triumph. Instead, it is a trial
• Rob Harris analysis: The real reason Wells will survive this scandal? The PM

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.