‘Global momentum’: minister defends $100k New York trip
Communications Minister Anika Wells argued that taxpayers were charged approximately $100,000 for flights to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
Officials at the Senate estimates hearing confirmed $94,828 was spent on flights for the minister and two staff to attend a conference in New York in September.
The trip touted Labour’s world-leading social media ban on under-16s at a meeting of world leaders as Australia grappled with the deadly Optus triple zero outage.
Asked to justify the spending of public money, Ms Wells said the reason the dollar figure emerged was because the government was transparent.
“That event fueled a global momentum in this area; from that moment on, as recently as last week, you’ve seen a number of different jurisdictions come forward to announce that they will do exactly what Australia has done,” he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
When asked whether plane tickets are expensive, the communications minister replied: “I answered your question.”
The estimate hearing was told Ms Wells’ trip included high-level meetings about Australia’s new laws.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said the communications minister was out to spend taxpayers’ money “on a trip that doesn’t appear to have done much good for struggling Australians”.
Finance Minister Jim Chalmers said flights to the US for the UN summit were within the rules.
“This is about representing Australia on an issue where the world is listening to us on these social media restrictions to help protect our children online,” he told Sky News.
“People will make judgments about the cost of that, but from my perspective this is a very, very important trip, a very important way of representing Australia on the world stage.”
