There’s nothing quite like the feeding frenzy in Canberra when there’s blood in the water.
Political journalists and every opposition staffer are currently scouring the records of the independent parliamentary expenses authority looking for a fresh angle to try to claim the scalp of the communications minister, Anika Wells.
Everyone loves a user-friendly scandal – a 10-minute chopper ride for Bronwyn Bishop, a bottle of Grange for Barry O’Farrell or a Gold Coast investment property for Sussan Ley are all easily digested by a public already disenchanted with politics. And rightly, they were all closely scrutinised.
But is the current round of frenzy surrounding Wells warranted?
The most egregious example of taxpayer waste unearthed last week is the staggering $100,000 spent on a trip to New York for Wells to spruik the government’s social media ban for children under 16. The cost absolutely deserves scrutiny, but this is hardly a question of Wells’s judgment.
The exorbitant fares came after a last-minute change of flights after Wells had to stay in Australia to manage the Optus triple-zero call failure. Most likely these would have been organised at arm’s length to allow her to maintain her ministerial commitments, and they were also signed off by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese.
Maybe she should have cancelled the trip entirely. I’m pretty confident she wishes she did – not only to avoid the ensuing cost scandal, but also maybe to have spent a bit of couch time with her family after a torrid week of politics.
Which brings us to the flurry of stories about Wells’ expenses while sports minister, including the use of the family reunion travel entitlement to bring her husband to various sporting events that she was attending in an official capacity.
Wells is the minister for sport. She is expected to attend sporting events, whether she likes it or not. She has a family with three young children. Parliament allows the use of entitlements for family reunion purposes. She used the entitlement exactly as intended.
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Does anyone really think taking three small children, including four-year-old twins, to the snow for 48 hours while also trying to work in an official capacity was a luxury? While it may not pass the “pub test”, the reunion was within the rules, which are there to try to make a demanding job easier for family life.
Should taxpayers be paying for her spouse to attend a sporting event? The merits of this are debatable, but the current system allows it in a limited capacity, recognising that MPs are often required to attend events away from family and from Canberra. The official justification of the allowance is to facilitate “the family life of the parliamentarian”. Yes, they are supported by the taxpayer to have one.
Federal parliament is a different place to what it used to be, but it remains a patriarchal institution, designed for days when absent fathers were the norm. A ministerial schedule is relentless, and it is often the family “conscripts” who pay the highest price.
Thankfully, the face and attitudes of the parliament are changing. Largely as a result of Labor’s affirmative action rules, the number of young women, including those with children, is growing.
This is a good thing. If we want our parliament to reflect our society, we need working women with young children to be there, fighting for policy changes that help others like them.
But at the same time, there have been few changes to make parliament any more family-friendly; this is as much a challenge for male MPs wanting to be involved in their children’s lives as it is for females.
Change is slow. Gender roles in society are deeply entrenched, and I know many female MPs are still carrying the load of managing their family lives at the same time as trying to succeed in the male-dominated sphere of federal politics.
Family breakdowns are commonplace, and pursuing a life of public service as an MP involves sacrifice on the home front.
This is not to say that the use of federal entitlements should not be scrutinised; clearly there are lurks and any misuse of taxpayer funds should be properly exposed.
Wells has leant heavily on her entitlements, and many believe that this demonstrates that they are now too generous or, at least, overused.
The exorbitant cost of waiting Comcars, for example, is an issue that must surely be addressed, but again on this front Wells is no outlier.
The Guardian reported on Monday that senior government minister Don Farrell had charged taxpayers $9,000 over three years for his family’s travel costs after being invited to football games and tennis matches around Australia.
In response, Farrell said that the parliament would be “a lesser place if it weren’t for the mechanisms that allow young mothers, single parents, those with families, and those with caring responsibilities to serve as elected members”.
This sounded more a defence of Wells than his own travel, but goes to show that male ministers have been legitimately claiming spousal reunion travel costs for years without anyone raising an eyebrow.
There are some in government who view the timing of the pile-on suspiciously. The steady drip of stories comes just as Wells has been forging ahead with Australia’s world-first social media ban for under-16s that has been furiously resisted by tech giants such as Google.
Whether or not Wells survives the latest expenses “scandal” depends on what else is unearthed in the coming days. If she falls, it will likely not be for any broken rule, but for an expense that is deemed out of step with community expectations during a cost-of-living crisis.
But it is important to also keep the big picture in mind. In the absence of any other meaningful changes to the way federal parliament meets and operates in this country, it is hard to see how scaling back family reunion entitlements would make parliament any more tolerable to anyone seeking a sane and balanced life.
At home, tucked away in an expandable file, I have a Christmas card from Wells, sent not long after she was elected to Canberra when she was a lowly backbencher still in opposition.
In it, she congratulates me on a year of mothering while also trying to juggle the role of political correspondent for the Guardian – a role I reluctantly gave up in 2023 to try to achieve a better work-life balance with my young children.
Many women leave politics – or decide not to sign up in the first place – for this reason.
It’s pretty standard for journalists to receive MP Christmas cards. Most of them end up in the bin, and, to be clear, Wells is not a friend. But I kept this one because I had a feeling she would rise to political prominence; maybe one day I could show my kids that we were both once two young mums in the trenches, each trying to wrangle our professional and family lives as best we could.
• Sarah Martin is a senior correspondent for Guardian Australia
