Andrew Bolt: Anika Wells is shocked if taxpayers are forced to pay for a boss’s lunch. Unless it’s her own.
Anika Wells flayed the Coalition for promising to let employers claim a business lunch against their tax. Now she’s charging AFL trips and Michelin-star banquets to the public purse.
We learn from her social media posts that Anika Wells is shocked — shocked! — if taxpayers are forced to pay for a boss’s lunch.
Unless it’s her own. That’s different. Then the Albanese government’s sports and communications minister is off to a Michelin-star restaurant in Paris.
Waiter! Drinks all around! More oysters!
Of all of Wells’ shameless spending of taxpayer money on herself and her family — trips to the snow and the sports, Comcar drivers made to wait up to 10 hours at the tennis, free flights to a friend’s party and, it seems, a Labor fundraiser — it’s that dinner and drinks in Paris last year that damns her most.
Early this year Wells flayed the Coalition for promising to let employers claim a business lunch against their tax.
In one post, Wells sneered: “The Coalition have come up with a cost of living policy that not even the Cookie Monster would gobble down … Free lunches for bosses paid for by you, the taxpayer.”
In another post, she protested: “The Liberals want government to get you to pay for the boss’s lunch!”
Even back in 2021, Wells was complaining: “I’ve had a gutful of the Morrison government treating taxpayer money like their own looting rorting piggy bank.”
So what was Wells thinking last year when she slugged taxpayers $1700 for that dinner and drinks in Paris — a splurge for just herself, two staff and the Australian ambassador?
Wells on Wednesday insisted she’d done nothing wrong: “My job is to follow the rules, I will follow the rules.”
But the people defending her defended everything … except that dinner.
Oh, their excuses, like this for flying her husband to three AFL grand finals, two Boxing Day Tests and one ski trip to Thredbo with her family reunion allowance: that this kept her in contact with her family while she worked.
Really? That’s “work”? And if that’s a family reunion, why did Wells most times leave the kids back home?
Then there were the usual excuses made for powerful Leftist women like Julia Gillard: that the criticism of her failings is “gendered”.
Seriously? We wouldn’t care if a male politician spent $1700 of our money on himself at a fancy restaurant?
Well, we know that’s false, because Wells herself flayed a man, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and his ministers for “treating taxpayer money like their own looting rorting piggy bank”.
So why accept it from a woman?
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Anika Wells is shocked if taxpayers are forced to pay for a boss’s lunch. Unless it’s her own.
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