Communications and Sports Minister Anika Wells has defended her use of parliamentary expenses after details emerged of another taxpayer-funded trip, with $3000 spent to fly her husband and children to the Thredbo ski resort.
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"All of these costs have been submitted through the usual guidelines," Ms Wells told Sky.
"They have been found to be within the rules ... I'll continue to follow the rules and follow the guidelines, as I have in every single instance that you've outlined."
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended his minister, who has faced intense scrutiny since last week when forced to defend her team's almost $100,000 spending on a trip to New York to promote Australia's social media ban to the world in September.
"This was a really important event," Mr Albanese told ABC Insiders on Sunday, saying Ms Well was "doing her job."
He confirmed his office would have approved the New York flights, which were booked last minute after Ms Well delayed her travel to deal with the Optus outage.
"I didn't get all the receipts ... This will come as a shock [but] I don't, you know, ring up and make bookings myself," he said.
Of the Brisbane-based minister's Thredbo weekend - when she flew her family to the ski resort to spend time with them while she was working, using her parliamentarian's family reunion entitlement - Mr Albanese said: "It was within entitlements."
He would not be drawn on whether Ms Wells should nonetheless repay the funds, as current Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke did after his $12,000 family trip to Uluru in 2012, when he was the environment minister, was scrutinised.
Mr Burke has said while those expenses were within the guidelines, they had not met "community expectations."
When asked by Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell if her family went skiing, evidence of which the minister's husband had posted on social media, Ms Wells replied: "Yes."
"I was there to work. I did work across the weekend," she said.
"You can see the official engagements that I had. Separate to that, I used my family reunion entitlement within the guidelines, as every parliamentarian can do."
The minister submitted to the grilling, stretching over most of a 25-minute interview on Sunday morning.
Ms Wells also stood by her taxpayer-funded $3600 trip to Adelaide in June, during which she attended a friend's birthday party, and three trips to Paris taken within 12 months - for work in relation to the Rugby World Cup, Paris Olympics and Paris Paralympics - that cost taxpayers a combined $116,000.
When asked if she had been invited to the party before or after planning the Adelaide work trip, the minister replied: "I can check the timeline," while emphasising that the expenses were within the guidelines, which are set by the Finance Department.
The department's website says that expense claims can be made for one of four reasons - when an MP or minister is undertaking parliamentary duties, electorate duties, party political duties or official duties - and that "the dominant purpose test asks whether you would have undertaken the activity or incurred or claimed the expense, allowance or other public resource but for your parliamentary business".
Ms Wells hesitated at times when answering questions - including when put on the spot over specific documents, like one showing the minister had been "authorised to spend $6000 on meals for five days ... at the Paris Olympics", an average $1200 per day.
"I'm not sure. I mean, I recall sometimes I was eating a muesli bar in the car," Ms Wells said.
"These are big days ... I appreciate how these locations look, but these are where world sporting events take place. I didn't choose Paris to be the venue for the Summer Olympic and Paralympics."
She described a lavish $1000 dinner in Paris with a staffer, a departmental employee and then Australian ambassador to France Gillian Bird as "an orientation meeting," saying: "We had a lot of work. You trying to hit the round running with these things. I don't resolve from the fact that this is important work."
The Coalition has seized on each bill's revelation to attack the minister and Labor, describing Ms Wells "air-miles Anika."
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley resigned as health minister in 2017 after her use of entitlements was scrutinised following her decision to buy a luxury Gold Coast apartment while on a taxpayer-funded trip for official ministerial business.
Opposition industry spokesperson Alex Hawke on Sunday said Ms Wells' explanation that her expenses met the guidelines "doesn't stack up," while finance spokesperson James Paterson called on the minister to "refer all of her travel expenses [to] the independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for review to make sure that they are actually are within the rules."
Mr Hawke told Sky: "If the minister is eating a muesli bar and falling asleep in Paris, then why is the taxpayer being charged for expensive dinners and expensive food and expensive travel if she's not partaking of them?"
"Whether it's New York, whether it's Paris, whether it's Thredbo, these are expenses that would make the royals blush," he said. "And yet she looks down the camera and says, 'oh well, it's all within the guidelines' ... Australians aren't going to buy that."
Ms Wells told Sky: "I absolutely appreciate that people have a gut reaction to these figures ... That's why I agree that entitlements should be scrutinised. I'm happy for mine to be scrutinised. I'm happy for mine to continue to be scrutinised.
"But at the end of the day, I don't write these rules, and must follow these rules."
