Jailed former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale, and his travel associates — including current councillor Paul Tully — spent $250,000 on at least two overseas trips, but the taxpayer has never been shown that sum.
A Right to Information (RTI) investigation by Nine News has revealed that the directors of Ipswich City Properties Pty Ltd (ICP) — Pisasale, former Ipswich council chief executive Carl Wulff and Mr Tully — spent around $85,000 travelling across the United States more than a decade ago.
That comes on top of another trip in 2012 around Europe and the Middle East featuring — what Queensland's Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) in a letter setting out findings of its investigation, called "excessive spending" — a private jet and five-star hotels.
Together it amounted to more than $250,000 charged to ICP.
At the time, ICP was wholly owned by the Ipswich City Council. It started in 2009 with a $50 million loan from Queensland Treasury and $41 million in advances from council.
However, the people of Ipswich have remained in the dark about ICP expenses for more than a decade.
The Queensland government is facing new pressure to reveal the rest of any other spending.
Pisasale is in prison after being convicted of fraud and official corruption, and is due to be paroled in October.
Wulff was sentenced to five years' jail in 2019 for corruption and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Mr Tully has retained his professional position as an Ipswich councillor and his position remains that he "did nothing wrong".
As information about the ICP's spending comes to light, Mr Tully is facing calls to resign — including from the Queensland Opposition — which he is rejecting.
"Artie Fadden, when he was the prime minister of Australia said, 'Never complain, never explain and never resign', and Artie Fadden had it right," Mr Tully said on Tuesday.
Mr Tully said there were two trips concerning ICP, one to the United States in 2010 and one to Europe and the UAE in 2012.
"Both were economic development issues for the City of Ipswich," he said. "Both the state government and the CCC have not advanced any inquiries into what we did.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said today she was "sure the people of Ipswich will be able to have their say on those matters".
When asked if Mr Tully should resign, leave the Labor party, or repay some of the money used on the overseas trips, she replied: "That's a matter for him."
"He was democratically elected and it's up to the people of Ipswich to decide his fate," the Premier said.
"There'll be an election coming up … the public has the opportunity to vote them in, to keep them in, or vote them out."
Where did they go?
RTI documents showed the group visited San Francisco, Indianapolis, Chattanooga, Washington and New York City during their 2010 trip to the US. They also deviated from the official itinerary to Las Vegas.
That trip cost ICP more than $85,000, with $38,000 going towards accommodation.
RTI documents showed they would spend another $170,000 on a separate trip to Europe and the Middle East two years later.
The new Ipswich City Council last year appealed to the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) to publish the decade-worth of councillor spending information, which current Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding said would reveal spending on travel on a transactional level.
That request was rejected.
If it was public money, why wasn't the spending published?
The OIC said in a statement its decision spanned a "variety of reasons", including privacy.
It said the information that would have been released was extensively broader than the travel spending.
"There was a very real risk that personal information about both council employees and other members of the community may have been identified from the data," the OIC statement said.
"Council were [sic] encouraged to undertake further examination of this data to eliminate this risk, but did not do so.
"Council's submission raises public interest considerations where disclosing personal information could reasonably be expected to prejudice the fair treatment of individuals."
It said the contents of what the council wished to publish were "extensively broader" than what had been published in recent days.
Deputy Opposition Leader Jarrod Bleijie criticised the Queensland government for not publicising the spending when it sacked the council in 2018 — before Mr Tully ran again, and was re-elected in 2020.
"Had we known about this information, and had the government been up-front with the people of Queensland, I think it would have been a different election result," Mr Bleijie said.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles — who is also the state's Local Government Minister — said the state would struggle to recoup funds spent by ICP's directors.
"That would be very hard to do — the funds have been spent. They're not there to be recouped any longer," Mr Miles said.
On Wednesday, Mr Tully said that he had no plans to repay the funds.
"I have spent 41 years trying to represent this community and I stand by my record," he said.
Mr Tully has declined to comment on the report.
