Galleries, museums, chauffeurs for taxpayer-funded $126k ministerial trip

While many Queenslanders were struggling to keep a roof over their head, Queensland Communities Minister Leeanne Enoch was jet-setting around North America in business class with three senior staffers.

Documents obtained by Nine News under right to information laws reveal the trip, led by Enoch, whose other ministerial responsibilities include Treaty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, and the Arts, cost more than $126,000.

The Minister for Treaty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Communities and the Arts, Leeanne Enoch.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The 10-day trip, taking in New York, Edmonton and Vancouver for the purposes of “cultural diplomacy”, was approved by former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

Enoch was accompanied by director-general Clare O’Connor, department executive director Paul O’Driscoll, and the minister’s chief of staff, Felix Gibson.

The study tour was summarised in a document tabled to Queensland parliament in December, but the full costs have not been released until now.

Enoch has never issued a press release or posted to her social media accounts about it.

It began on October 27 with business-class flights on Air Canada from Brisbane to New York, where the four stayed at the trendy Moxy Hotel in Times Square for three nights, costing about $US430 per person, per night.

While in New York, the group visited The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art), the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the United Nations.

They visited about a dozen galleries or museums over a week.

On October 31, they stayed at the luxurious Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton, Canada.

The same day they visited the Supportive Housing Apartments in Vancouver to see how that organisation was helping people experiencing homelessness.

Enoch delivered the keynote speech at a First Nations Leaders’ Gathering in Vancouver on November 2 on how Queensland could “learn from Canada’s progressive truth-telling and reconciliation processes”.

Of the 24 flights taken across the trip, only two were economy tickets.

The group also spent $2134 being ferried to and from airports in chauffeur vans.

A spokesman for Enoch said the tour was to help inform the development of the Queensland Government’s First Nations policy.

“Canada and Queensland have similar First Nations histories and experiences,” the spokesman said.

“Canada is considered a world leader in modern treaty and its work to close the gap on the life outcomes of its Indigenous people.

“The minister represented Queensland at the British Columbia Cabinet and First Nations Leaders’ meeting and met with Canadian government officials, First Nations Chief and elders and Canadian survivors of the Indian Residential School system.

“The minister was also invited to meet with the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which is based at the UN headquarters in New York.”

Last year Nine News revealed the Queensland Museum, which falls under Enoch’s portfolio, was yet to inform several Pacific Island nations about dozens of their ancestral remains being held in Queensland’s storage.

Opposition spokeswoman Deb Frecklington said the 10-day tour showed a “lack of priorities” during a time when many Queenslanders were struggling.

“People are living homeless, they are living in tents under bridges,” she said.

“We’ve got people who can’t put food on their table, some people aren’t even sending their kids to school, and yet we’ve got a minister who is jet-setting around the world.

“Where are the priorities of this minister?”