Labor’s Tony Burke caught up a Tarkine creek with a paddle

Tony Burke charged taxpayers $7600 to charter a plane so he could view Tasmania’s Tarkine wilderness with GetUp!

A screen grab of Tony Burke from a GetUp! campaign video.

Labor frontbencher Tony Burke charged taxpayers $7600 to charter a plane so he could view Tasmania’s Tarkine wilderness with activist group GetUp! while environment minister in 2012.

Taxpayers were billed for the plane to fly 62km from Burnie to Waratah in Tasmania’s northwest, to return to Burnie, and travel to Hobart two days later.

Mr Burke’s three-day trip, which cost almost $10,000 in total, took place after GetUp! lobbied him for weeks on social media to block two mine pro­posals in the area.

During the April 2012 visit, GetUp! filmed a campaign video featuring an interview with Mr Burke and footage of him kayaking with the group’s founder, Simon Sheikh.

Mr Burke is also shown hiking with then Environment Tasmania director Phill Pullinger.

A year later, he gave Dr Pullinger’s organisation $2.4 million in grants through a process that has been compared with Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg’s decision to give the Great Barrier Reef Foundation $444m without going to tender.

A 2014 Australian National Audit Office investigation found Mr Burke had bypassed 29 organisations that applied for grants to give the money to Environment Tasmania, which had not been part of the competitive grant round.

Mr Burke’s wife, Skye Laris, worked as GetUp! campaign manager between March 2011 and January 2012. She was Mr Burke’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2011. The relationship ­between the pair, who married in 2015, did not begin until the end of 2013 and Ms Laris was not ­involved in the April 2012 Tarkine trip.

Mr Burke’s spokeswoman said the flight from Burnie to Waratah was a “site inspection flight” and it returned to Burnie, where the minister hired a car and drove the 50 minutes back to Waratah.

Department of Finance records show Mr Burke claimed $465 to hire the car for three days and more than $500 for Comcars to and from airports in Canberra, Hobart and Sydney and to a media engagement in Hobart. He claimed $349 in travel ­allowance to spend a night in a cabin in Zeehan on his first night in the Tar­kine, $349 for a night in a tent the following night and $354 for a final night in Hobart.

Asked whether it was reasonable to claim $349 for a night in a tent, Mr Burke’s spokeswoman said he had been invoiced by commercial business Tarkine Trails for the accommodation.

A screen grab of Tony Burke, left, from a GetUp campaign video.

Mr Burke’s spokeswoman ­defended his decision to appear in the GetUp! campaign video, saying: “Mr Burke was asked during the trip to answer questions on camera, and he obliged.”

Mr Burke said he visited the Tarkine in the course of determining whether it should receive national heritage listing.

“I took the decision to visit the area twice, once with mining/­industry stakeholders interested in showing me parts of the Tar­kine they wanted me to see, and again with environmental stakeholders showing me parts of the Tarkine they wanted me to visit,” he said.

“This resulted in a far more ­informed decision than if I had only had access to a departmental briefing in the Canberra office.”

Mr Burke led the charge against former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop over the $5200, 80km helicopter charter flight to a Liberals fundraiser that led to her resignation. Mr Burke’s spokeswoman ­rejected comparisons between Mr Burke’s charter flight and Ms Bishop’s helicopter trip.