Liberal MP Andrew Laming said he would refuse to pay back travel expenses after a scathing report from the independent parliamentary watchdog found he wrongly billed taxpayers more than $8,000 and at times “obfuscated, provided inconsistent answers or ignored [questions]” during its investigation.
The Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority began investigating Laming’s claims for travel expenses in 2020 after a Guardian Australia series on MPs’ expense claims.
The audit examined Laming’s travel in a single month and found he had wrongly claimed 21 expenses – all relating to his or his family’s travel between Hobart, Melbourne and Brisbane in June 2019 – totalling $8,288.04 and told him to pay back $10,360, including a 25% loading.
Ipea’s finding will now trigger a payment recovery process, and parliamentarians generally either repay excess payments in full or offset it against future claims.
Late on Tuesday, Laming told the Guardian he disputed “every syllable” of the report and described the investigation as a “baseless and subjective witch-hunt”.
“Ipea’s finding that the travel was not ‘parliamentary enough’ is false,” he said. “For this reason I categorically reject the report’s conclusions and view the process as a ‘witch-hunt’.
“I won’t be repaying legitimate parliamentary travel, and no MP ever should.”
Asked whether that meant he would not be paying back the expenses that were the subject of Ipea’s report, he said: “Yes, clearly.”
The audit focused largely on two trips Laming billed to taxpayers.
The first was a three-day trip from Brisbane to Hobart with his partner and two children, beginning 21 June 2019, during which Laming claimed thousands of dollars worth of flights, travel allowance, hire car costs and Cabcharges.
Laming said the trip was mainly needed so he could attend the combined meeting of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) and the Australia and New Zealand Society of Ophthalmic Plastic Surgeons (ANZSOPS).
The Ipea investigation said organisers were “unaware of his intention to attend until shortly before the conference commenced”.
It found Laming had “no formal invitation” and spoke with organisers at “the last minute”, and that the organisers made a slot for him to speak in the morning tea break.
“We came to know about Mr Laming’s plan to attend the conference quite close to the actual meeting and we made a slot for him to speak on Sunday the 23rd of June,” the organisers told Ipea.
Expenses can only be claimed for trips where the main purpose is parliamentary business. Ipea found the speech was not enough for the dominant purpose of the three-day trip to be parliamentary business.
“While this [speech] may satisfy the definition of parliamentary business, it fails the dominant purpose test when examined within the context of Mr Laming’s activities, and use of business resources, over a three-day period,” the authority found.
Laming disputes the last-minute nature of his invitation, telling the Guardian he “was invited, confirmed and registered [on] June 12”.
Ipea also examined a separate trip from Brisbane to Melbourne on 26 June, for the flagship annual conference for the Australian horticulture industry, Hort Connections, during which the MP claimed more than $4,000 in flights, travel allowance, and Cabcharges.
The report said that “IPEA understands his spouse attended in her own right and for the entirety of the Hort Connections conference”.
Laming billed taxpayers for her return travel home to Brisbane from the conference, and his own travel to and from Melbourne.
He initially told Ipea he went to the conference to develop a proposal for a “food hub” in Birkdale, Brisbane, in his electorate.
“I was invited by a sponsor to attend the congress to advance the food hub project,” he told them.
Ipea’s investigation found he had not arrived until 9.49pm on the last day of the conference. By Laming’s own evidence, the authority said, he was only at the event for “the final hour of the dinner that concluded the conference”.
When asked about his late arrival, Laming told Ipea: “The parliamentary grounds for travel to Melbourne was to attend the conclusion of the Gala dinner where all relevant stakeholders would be assembled. This was by arrangement with a Queensland sponsor at a time when formal award presentations had concluded that evening.”
Ipea asked for the name of the Queensland sponsor and evidence of the invitation.
Laming initially said the sponsor was “no longer employed with the organisation nor able to correspond on that matter”, but, after being pressed, told Ipea he received an informal invitation from “a Queensland AusVeg representative”.
Later, Laming provided an “unverified” email to Ipea from a “CEO and part-time employee of Mr Laming”, who advised that it was in fact him who suggested the MP attend the conference. The email says: “Mr Laming was not a delegate to the conference but took the opportunity to attend as a visitor. I introduced him to a couple of my table guests at the dinner and he then independently worked the room.”
Ipea said Laming did not respond to requests to provide the names of anyone he engaged with on the evening of 26 June 2019.
It found Laming did not travel for the dominant purpose of parliamentary business, meaning “the travel of his spouse from Melbourne to Brisbane” was also not consistent with the legislative provisions for family reunion expenses.
Ipea was damning in its assessment of Laming’s approach to the investigation.
“In general, and specifically in relation to the audit report, Mr Laming’s responses have been deficient in content and detail,” it said. “Further, in a number of instances where Ipea posed specific questions to Mr Laming he obfuscated, provided inconsistent answers or ignored the question altogether.”
Laming told the Guardian that Ipea had “cherry-picked” the evidence to arrive at an adverse finding. He said the investigation had confirmed he travelled to address a national conference in Hobart, attend an industry gala dinner in Melbourne and meet with independent educators.
“Ipea’s finding that the travel was not ‘parliamentary enough’ is false. For this reason I categorically reject the report’s conclusions and view the process as a ‘witch-hunt.’”
