The MP expenses watchdog is chasing former Liberal politician Andrew Laming for a further $8,000 over taxpayer-funded travel to Sydney and Melbourne, prompting him to accuse the agency’s staff of bullying and intimidation.
The Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority is already seeking to force Laming to pay roughly $10,000 for earlier trips to Hobart, Melbourne and Brisbane in 2019, which it says was wrongly billed to taxpayers.
Laming, who left parliament last year, has described Ipea’s findings as flawed and the result of a “witch-hunt” and suggested that he wants to take the rulings to court for judicial review.
Last year, while Laming’s stoush with the watchdog continued, Ipea began examining his more recent travel.
Internal documents published after a Guardian freedom of information request show the watchdog has invoiced Laming for another $8,128, including a 25% penalty loading, for travel to Sydney and Melbourne in early April 2022. Laming charged taxpayers for commercial air fares, the travel costs of his family, and Comcars and Cabcharge costs.
It means the watchdog is now seeking more than $18,000 from the former member for Bowman for his taxpayer-funded travel.
The documents show that, after Ipea made initial inquiries in May last year, Laming said he was in Sydney for meetings with the Australian Society of Ophthalmologists in a “parliamentary capacity”.
He also said he was in Melbourne for a two-day event in regional Victoria “given my involvement through Stronger Communities funding in re-establishing post-Covid a successful model for a similar regional community event in Bowman”.
When asked to provide evidence supporting this rationale, he responded: “Please accept yesterday’s response as my final correspondence relating to this matter.”
Ipea continued to press Laming for evidence in June and July, and warned him it would raise an invoice if it was not provided.
Laming told the watchdog he had evidence justifying the 2022 trip but would not provide it until his concerns about the earlier investigation of his travel were addressed.
“Lets just see if your first matter stands up first,” he told Ipea staff in August.
“I have repeatedly indicated until your last assurance [review] has survived external appeal, I will not be threatened or bullied by subsequent ones.
“The 2019 process is before the Commonwealth Ombudsman and only when completely resolved will I provide comprehensive material I have at my disposal to justify the April 2022 travel. This is not an invitation to further discuss the matter, but please can I remind you to crack on with my FoI request, relating to the so-called internal review.”
Laming told the Guardian that the travel “is clearly parliamentary”, something that was “evident to anyone reading the travel itinerary”.
He also suggested he would take the case to a court for judicial review, saying such a course was “now inevitable”.
“The Ipea pursuit commenced 72 hours after baseless and completely discredited media attacks on me back in 2021 [which were] settled in the federal court last year,” he said. “Ipea can’t back out, so they have doubled down instead.”
In its correspondence asking for an explanation of the 2022 trip, Ipea said it had reviewed social media and sent Laming two posts by him at the relevant time, including one of him at a sporting match in Melbourne and another with an unidentified person in Sydney. In the latter post, he referred to having compared notes on Covid, the health system and politics with the unnamed individual.
The rules state that an MP is justified in claiming expenses so long as the dominant purpose of their travel is parliamentary business.
Ipea typically gives MPs 30 days after an invoice is issued before escalating its payment recovery. It has the option of referring MPs to debt collectors.
Laming has rejected Ipea’s investigation of his 2019 travel as a “witch-hunt” that was “baseless and subjective” and said he rejected “every syllable” of its report.
“Each leg, every event and my participation in these events were in my view parliamentary dominant in purpose and backed by independent third-party corroboration,” he said last year.
“With the facts clearly before them, the Ipea conclusions are bizarre and will not survive independent scrutiny.”
He says the watchdog ignored evidence in its possession and was politically motivated.
Ipea was highly critical of Laming’s approach in its investigation of the 2019 travel.
“In general, and specifically in relation to the audit report, Mr Laming’s responses have been deficient in content and detail,” the watchdog said in its audit report. “Further, in a number of instances where Ipea posed specific questions to Mr Laming he obfuscated, provided inconsistent answers or ignored the question altogether.”
Further documents released by Ipea also show the watchdog cleared a series of politicians, including Stuart Robert, Dan Tehan and Simon Birmingham, for their travel to Sydney, during which they attended a Liberal fundraiser held at Nine’s headquarters in 2019. Ipea found they were in Sydney for legitimate parliamentary business, such as media interviews.
Ipea also cleared a group of conservative politicians for billing taxpayers to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference conference in Sydney last year.
