Victorian senator Bridget McKenzie claimed taxpayer-funded flights to Tasmania on the weekend of her son’s engagement party, 10 months before she billed taxpayers to travel to his Tamar Valley wedding, according to expenditure records.
The fresh revelations come after senior Coalition MP Tim Wilson questioned the optics of McKenzie using public money to partially fund her four-day trip to Tasmania for the family wedding in 2023.
Published by the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority, the expenditure records show McKenzie also invoiced taxpayers for flights in the days around her son’s engagement party in 2022 when she was a senior cabinet minister within the Morrison government.
On Friday, April 29, 2022, McKenzie’s domestic flight schedule lists a trip – with no price listed – from Melbourne to Devonport, where her son lives.
Later that evening, the Nationals senator appeared at the launch of Liberal MP Gavin Pearce’s federal election campaign in nearby Latrobe, posting to social media: “We need people like Gav back in our Parliament. He delivers for his regional communities and understands the issues they face.”
The following night, she attended her son’s engagement party, where she posed for photos with her family.
Two days later on Sunday, May 1, McKenzie billed taxpayers $259.40 for a flight from Devonport to Melbourne. She did not claim any accommodation costs while in Tasmania.
The engagement party was held during the 2022 federal election campaign, with parliament prorogued on April 11 and the election held six weeks later on May 21.
Rules permit MPs to claim travel expenses for parliamentary business, official duties and electorate duties, as well as “party duties” – such as conferences and executive meetings – during elections until polling day.
But a long-standing convention provides that ministers do not claim travel costs between the prime minister’s official campaign launch and election day.
In response to questions about the 2022 engagement party claims, a spokesperson for McKenzie described the revelation as a “baseless smear by the Labor Party”.
“Senator McKenzie undertook legitimate activities while working in Tasmania, when she was a senior government minister,” the spokesperson said.
The senator had “a series of high-profile formal ministerial appointments” in Tasmania over the weekend in question, including roundtables with regional business organisations, her office said.
“Senator McKenzie did not use taxpayer funds for personal, private activities,” the spokesperson said.
Her office also listed a Tasmanian recipient of a round of grant funding as part of the Regional Connectivity Program and a funding announcement for a collaboration with the University of Tasmania.
The latest claim comes one day after this masthead revealed the Victorian senator used $853.52 in public money to travel to Tasmania the same weekend her son was married at a vineyard in Sidmouth, on February 18, 2023.
A spokesperson for McKenzie said the 2023 flight and accommodation was “undertaken in accordance with parliamentary rules as part of a multi-state campaign to expose Labor’s budget cuts to infrastructure”.
The spokesperson said McKenzie’s work in Tasmania ahead of her son’s wedding included “co-ordinating a national media announcement and holding a press conference”.
On Monday, Nationals leader Matt Canavan said he was absolutely satisfied with McKenzie’s response to the 2023 expenses claim.
“Bridget is an extremely hardworking senator, she was … highlighting cuts to infrastructure, which is her job,” Canavan said.
However, shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said that while McKenzie’s taxpayer funded spending may have been within the rules, it could fail the pub test.
“The focus always has to be to make sure we’re spending public money appropriately and doing it consistent with the rules,” Wilson told the Today show on Monday.
“But the difference between the rules and the pub tests, there’ll always be a gap, and I think that this clearly fits within that.”
Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said taxpayers have the right to trust that their elected representatives are doing the right thing.
“I’m sure the Australian public deserve to understand that their representatives are … spending taxpayers’ dollars in the appropriate forms,” she said.
“I’m sure that Senator McKenzie will be dealing with those issues moving forward and will have to speak to those issues herself.”
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