Tighter travel rules may be on the way, after Albanese seeks advice from watchdog

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears to be starting to move towards some tightening of parliamentarians’ travel entitlements.

After more than a week of controversy, Albanese on Friday said he had asked the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for advice.

“I’ve said to IPEA, please give us some advice. And we’ll take that on board and when that advice is received, we’ll make a decision in the usual way,” he told a news conference on Friday.

Pressed on when he had sought the advice, Albanese claimed he had “done it publicly at multiple press conferences”, although the record does not back this up. Pushed further to clarify what day he asked IPEA for advice, he said, “I ask all the time publicly”.

A second cabinet minister, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, has now referred her spending to IPEA for audit. Rowland spent $21,685 for flights and travel allowance in 2023 for a family trip to Western Australia.

Communications Minister Anika Wells had already referred herself to IPEA, after revelations of her extensive use of family reunion and other travel entitlements.

It was the huge $95,000 cost of airfares to New York for her, her staffer and a departmental official that triggered the entitlements furore. The trip was to spruik at the United Nations the ban on under-16s having social media accounts.

The political firestorm has now engulfed a wide range of parliamentarians, and over-shadowed this week’s start of the social media law.

Among the big spenders have been Special Minister of State Don Farrell, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, Nationals Andrew Wilcox, and independent senator Fatima Payman.

Opposition leader Sussan Ley wants to canvass changes to the rules directly with Albanese. She has asked him for a meeting to discuss how his ministerial code can be properly enforced and how public trust in the parliamentary system can be strengthened.

In 2017 Ley had to resign from the Turnbull ministry over her travel use in relation to a purchase of a Gold Coast property. She told Sky on Friday, “I made a mistake. I put my hand up. I apologised to the Australian people. I held myself accountable to the ministerial code of conduct”.

She said Wells had not done one of those things. The opposition has argued Wells should stand aside while an investigation is held into whether she has breached the ministerial code of conduct, which is stronger than the parliamentary rules.

Ley described Wells’ behaviour as “scandalous” and said she had “clearly breached” the ministerial code of conduct.