Liberal MP Steve Irons has reportedly paid back $2,000 for flights he claimed at taxpayer expense to attend his own wedding.
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, blasted Irons for “more of the same” misuse of travel entitlements.
Irons married Cheryle Street, a real estate agent, at Melbourne’s Crown casino in October 2011.
According to the West Australian Irons billed taxpayers $1,346 to fly from Perth to Melbourne for the wedding and $912 to return to Perth.
A spokeswoman for Irons reportedly said his flights were claimed in error and repaid.
“These flights were identified during a self-audit and brought to the attention of the Department of Finance,” she said. “Voluntary repayment was then arranged.”
On 17 September, the West Australian reported that Irons had also used taxpayers’ money for flights to a Gold Coast golf tournament to learn about “golf tourism opportunities”.
At a press conference on Monday, Dreyfus said: “Breaches of the expense regime for MPs should be taken seriously and if Mr Irons has done the wrong thing, it’s absolutely right he has repaid the money.”
“We know that the Liberal members of parliament have got form … misusing travel entitlements to go to colleagues’ weddings. This is a bit more of the same.”
The special minister of state, Scott Ryan, said that Irons had “dealt with that both in terms of the media claim and in terms of the substance of the claim and that it relates to something several years ago”.
A former Greens senator, Robert Simms, told Sky News the case showed the need for an independent audit process on travel entitlements and penalty regime when MPs breached rules.
He said it was not good enough for an MP to receive a “slap on the wrist” when they are “so flagrantly in breach of standards”.
Guardian Australia has contacted Irons for comment.
