Labor Minister claims $100K New York flights, $600 Paris meal, $3K family ski trip ‘within guidelines’

Communications Minister Anika Wells has defended her spending on taxpayer-funded trips — including $100,000 flights to New York, ritzy meals in Paris, and a ski trip with her family — claiming it was within the Government guidelines.

Ms Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dismissed questions about whether she should pay some of the money back and have insisted the spending was necessary for her to undertake her official ministerial duties.

She racked up a $120,000 travel expenses bill for herself and two staffers to attend an event at the UN General Assembly in New York in September to spruik the yet-to-be-launched social media ban to world leaders at an almost $70,000 event.

The revelations of the cost of the Manhattan dash raised eyebrows on Tuesday and prompted further scrutiny on her travel expenses.

Within days, further details emerged over three Europe trips costing $116,000 in total, a $3000 spend on flights and allowances for her husband and children to join a Thredbo ski trip, and a $3681 two-day “business” trip to Adelaide where she attended a Labor friend’s 40th birthday.

Ms Wells sought to defend her spending on lavish meals and drinks in Paris by saying that on other occasions she was “eating a muesli bar in the car”.

She also claimed during an excruciating 25-minute interview on Sky’s Sunday Agenda that at one of the official engagements in Paris she “basically fell asleep at the table”.

The Paris bills had been while Ms Wells was in France on a five-day jaunt as Sports Minister for the 2024 Olympic Games, where the government had authorised her to spend $6000 on meals.

“From memory we walked to a restaurant, we met with the ambassador, she briefed us on what we’d missed because… we were arriving a few days later,” Ms Wells told Sky.

“From my memory, I basically fell asleep at the table, and we walked home.

“I appreciate it looks a certain way because it’s Paris, but that is where the Games were.”

She accepted the spending on the New York trip would elicit a “gut reaction” in the average Australian, but said the event for the social media ban “was really important” and “I stand by it”.

Ms Wells added that the flights were booked by an independent agency rather than her browsing “Webjet”.

Opposition have been scathing of the spending, saying her behaviour didn’t pass the voter pub test and dubbing her “Air-Miles Anika”.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has been especially critical because the New York trip came amid the triple-0 crisis in Australia which was linked to three deaths.

Ms Wells has claimed she was trying to “discharge my duties in both areas” by delaying her trip to the US to respond to the Optus outage before later attending the international social media ban event.

Manager of Opposition Business Alex Hawke on Sunday questioned why a self-described junior minister was racking up such costs on the taxpayer’s dime.

“The Minister’s defences don’t seem to stack up. If the Minister is eating a muesli bar and falling asleep in Paris, then why is the taxpayer being charged,” Mr Hawke told Sky.

“If her defence is, ‘well I was working really hard, and I didn’t eat much and I wasn’t really paying attention or asleep at the table’ then we could presumably recoup some of that money.

“When you look at the expenses of Annika Wells, whether it’s New York, whether it’s Paris, whether it’s Thredbo, these are expenses that would make the royals blush.”

Despite the widespread criticism — which has flowed into thousands of comments on Ms Wells social media page and online news articles about her — Mr Albanese has continued to back his minister.

Mr Albanese confirmed on ABC Insider’s on Sunday that he had approved the flights but claimed he “didn’t get all the receipts”.

He also reiterated that the spending was within the Government’s guidelines.

“Anika Wells was of course, doing her job as the Communications Minister who’s in charge of this world-leading legislation,” he said.

“It was an important event. It was a very significant event for Australia.”

During her appearance at the event, Ms Wells delivered a six-and-a-half-minute address. It was also attended by Mr Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Australia’s Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd.

Coalition Senator James Paterson called for Ms Wells’ spending to be reviewed by the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority.

“It bewilders me. I don’t even know how you can spend $100,000 on return flights to New York City, even if you’re flying business class, sometimes first class flights don’t even cost that much money,” Senator Paterson told reporters on Sunday.

“Ministers are required to publicly justify their expenses and make sure it’s in line with community expectations. All of this should be referred to the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for review to make sure it’s actually within the rules.”