Politicians’ travel expenses: Allegra Spender says ministerial staff should get cheaper flights for their MPs

Australian taxpayers are spending way too much on travel for politicians because their staff are failing to get the best flight deals, an independent teal MP says.

Allegra Spender argued Communications Minister Anika Wells’ $100,000 flights for herself and two advisers, to visit New York, looked like a case of her Labor staffers failing to shop around for a better deal.

“When you’re in business, you’re often looking for the best deal. You know, saying – ‘Well, that’s really expensive, I can’t justify that. Can I get a slightly later flight?’ or those things,” she told Nine’s Today program on Friday morning.

“Now, I think we could do much better at that in politics in terms of trying to get better deals in terms of costs. And I think that is part of what is going on here.”

But Flight Centre founder and chief executive Graham Turner said the corporate travel agency charged with booking travel for MPs and ministers was already required to get the best deal.

“Getting competitive airfares will be one of the contract requirements so there should be no need to shop that around,” he told The Nightly.

“It would be quite difficult to manage if ministers did their own shopping around and generally it would cost more both in money and time spent.”

Corporate Travel Management has the contract with the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority to book travel for MPs. Flight Centre previously had the tender when it was with the Department of Finance’s Ministerial and Parliamentary Services.

Ms Wells in September delayed flying to New York so she could stay in Australia and deal with the Optus triple-0 outage instead of travelling with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, leading to a $35,000 return flight.

Mr Turner estimated a last-minute flight one-way from Australia’s east coast to NYC, booked the night before, would typically cost $14,000 to $16,000.

“The one issue maybe is that she changed her booking a number of times which can add to the cost both from the airline and the travel agent for the work they need to do,” he said.

Family reunions shouldn’t break the bank

Ms Spender, a mother of three, defended the idea of allowing MPs to claim the cost of taking their family on official business, after fellow independent Andrew Wilkie flagged a motion to restrict it to just Canberra.

“You know, I’m lucky I live in Sydney, it’s closer than most, but it is really hard on all families,” she said.

“So, I think there’s a space for things like family reunion, but people want to make sure that you’re getting value for money and that you’re not taking the piss.”

Ms Spender’s six electorate office staff, based in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, cost the taxpayers $27,532 for domestic travel from July to September 2025, IPEA data showed.

This was a big increase from the $6884 bill for three staff from April to June, and the $11,476 bill covering four staff from January to March.

Ms Spender’s commercial flight bill for the September quarter added up to $3491 which was more than double the $1432 level for the June quarter. This covers transport to Canberra for parliamentary sittings, along with visits to other cities like Melbourne, as a member of committees on economics, migration, foreign affairs, defence and trade.

Mr Albanese’s office had approved Ms Wells’ office spending $94,827 on three business class flights to New York in September to deliver a speech on Australia’s under 16s social media ban on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.