Sports Minister Anika Wells ordered to repay $10,000 in questionable trips

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is standing by his embattled Cabinet colleague Anika Wells who has repaid $10,000 in taxpayer-funded travel after an independent audit found she had made four wrongful expense claims over three years related to family airfares and car hire.

The Labor Sports and Communications Minister in December requested an Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority audit into her travel claims, from 2022 to 2025, following an outcry over a last-minute $100,000 flight to New York so she could address the United Nations General Assembly on Labor’s world-first under 16s social media ban.

While that trip in September last year was within the rules and approved by the Prime Minister, it recommended that large travel expenses in future be flagged with the IPEA.

The independent umpire on MPs’ travel concluded $8093 in family-related travel claims by Ms Wells breached parliamentary business rules and applied a 25 per cent penalty, taking the total amount requiring repayment to $10,116.

On four occasions, the Brisbane-based Labor minister had broken the rules under the Parliamentary Business Resources Act 2017 introduced by former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government after a high-profile minister and future party leader had resigned for conducting personal business during a ministerial trip.

“I accept IPEA’s assessment and I am sorry for making these honest mistakes,” Ms Wells said on Friday following the release of the IPEA report.

“I have repaid the money with a penalty loading.

“The audit found, over four years of travel, involving nearly 250 separate trips, I made four mistakes.

“These were four cases where I chose what I thought was the more sensible, cheaper option, but those choices were not allowed according to the rules, which I accept and respect.”

Mr Albanese, who promoted Ms Wells from the backbench straight into the ministry four years ago with the aged care portfolio, noted “she has paid back the money” and rebuffed a call for her to resign.

“She referred herself to it which was appropriate and it was appropriate that she paid back the money … in accordance with the rules,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Friday.

“She has done what the rules require. Anika Wells is a very good minister doing extraordinary work … and Anika Wells has apologised.”

In February 2022, when Ms Wells was an Opposition backbencher shortly before the election, the IPEA found she had breached the rules by claiming $1209 for her husband Finn McCarthy, a lobbyist and former Queensland Labor government agriculture policy adviser, to fly from Brisbane to Canberra to collect one of their children.

At the time, Ms Wells had COVID and the couple did not meet, with a staffer instead taking the child to Canberra airport.

“Taking into account each of these factors, IPEA finds that while the misinterpretation of the family travel three-part test was understandable, this travel was not the dominant purpose of accompanying or joining the minister and therefore does not meet the requirements,” the IPEA said.

The minister was also ordered to repay $5513 for claims made in May 2025, in the days after the last election, for hiring a car unrelated to parliamentary business - with 63 of the 74 hours deemed to have been outside the rules.

Her repayment order also covered claiming $4684 in flights for her husband and children on May 10 that were also unrelated to her role as an MP.

Another $726 had to be repaid over a spousal flight for her husband to Brisbane, in September 2025.

Mr McCarthy had joined her in Melbourne when she had met sports administrators at the AFL Grand Final lunch.

While his trip to Melbourne met the definition of family travel, his flight back to Brisbane did not.

“IPEA finds that the travel by the minister’s spouse on 28 September to Brisbane did not meet the provisions ... as the minister’s parliamentary business in Melbourne had concluded on the previous day,” the IPEA said.

Ms Wells was also required to repay $644 in car hire - with 41 of the 74 hours unrelated to parliamentary business - when she met organising committee members of the Brisbane 2032 Olympics in Toowoomba in October 2025.

After that engagement, she drove from Toowoomba to Sydney and Canberra, staying with family members for two nights, with the IPEA finding that was not part of parliamentary business and therefore convened the Act.

But when it came to the New York flights for herself from Brisbane and a staff member, the IPEA concluded that selecting a flight just three days before in September 2025 gave her “very limited flight options available to her through the contracted travel services provider”.

“Noting that the costs attached to the New York travel appeared high, IPEA is now establishing a mechanism with its contracted travel services provider whereby higher cost bookings are flagged with IPEA prior to final booking,” the IPEA report said.

The IPEA was established within the Department of Finance in 2017 after then Liberal minister and future Opposition leader Sussan Ley bought a Gold Coast apartment during a ministerial trip.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie last year suggested spousal and family travel be limited to Canberra for parliamentary sitting weeks.

Family travel rules were designed to encourage more women, who are often mothers, into politics.