Taxpayers hit for Emma Husar’s party business

The federal Labor MP took a $6000 taxpayer-funded trip across Australia that included a side trip to Perth for an ALP event.

Emma Husar leaves her home in south Penrith on Wednesday morning. Picture: Hollie Adams

Federal Labor MP Emma Husar took a $6000 taxpayer-funded trip across Australia that included a side trip to Perth for an ALP event billed as “consultations” with party members on gender equality.

UPDATE: Explosive new allegations against Emma Husar have emerged

Ms Husar insisted yesterday she had “always acted within the rules” and treated the use of taxpayers’ money “extremely seriously” — but her decision to claim attendance at the Perth event in September raised new doubts about her use of MPs’ travel ­entitlements.

Guidelines for federal MPs are strict in defining travel entitlements for “parliamentary business”. They exclude party business other than meetings of a parliamentary party, a party’s executive or committees, or a party national conference of which the MP is a member.

In her expenses report for the September trip, Ms Husar said travelling to Perth after attending an NDIS parliamentary committee meeting in Darwin was for a “parliamentary political party meeting”.

The Perth leg added thousands to the trip cost — $1345 for the Darwin-Perth flight, $2311 for the Perth-Sydney return home flight and $403 in extra travel allowance — for an ALP event described on invitations as part a “national conversation” on gender equality.

A spokesman for Ms Husar told The Australian detail of the Perth event “makes clear it is a committee meeting” and therefore not inconsistent with guidelines set by the independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority.

But the event, while held under the banner of federal Labor’s ­status of women committee, was not a committee meeting but an informal policy forum “event” held between 10am and 1pm on September 22 last year. It was ­listed as an event of the National Labor Women’s Network, according to its website.

Party members attended a local community centre to “contribute to the conversation”.

The Australian reported yesterday how Ms Husar skipped day two of a taxpayer-funded NDIS parliamentary committee meeting in far north Queensland in March, travelling to Brisbane to attend a Bruno Mars concert with a close friend.

Allegations Ms Husar may have misused her travel entitlements come on top of claims the first-term Labor MP for Lindsay in Sydney’s west bullied staff and “everyone had a turn at being her slave”. With a staff turnover of 20 over the past two years, Ms Husar’s treatment of employees is the subject of an internal review for the NSW ALP’s head office.

Speculation has started in senior NSW ALP ranks that efforts could be made by party officials to persuade Ms Husar not stand at the next election, but Bill Shorten’s official position is to wait for the internal report by barrister and former party staffer John Whelan.

Ms Husar is on leave but she confirmed in tweets yesterday that, while confident she had ­always acted within the rules, she had asked the IDEA to double-check and review whether or not she had observed its travel guidelines for MPs.

Ms Husar tweeted that “to be abundantly clear” no work expenses were used to attend a Bruno Mars concert.

After attending a daylong NDIS committee hearing that day, she said she had two meetings in Brisbane on March 15 with organisations to discuss domestic violence policy issues.