Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, , 54:47 to 57:25
Officials respond to ANAO findings regarding unapproved domestic travel and missing travel requests. The department also confirms the cessation of taxpayer-funded airline memberships in line with whole-of-government decisions.
Topics: Travel and event costs, Integrity
Speakers: Matthew Geysen, Senator Ross Cadell, Unknown Speaker
price? Okay. Might change uh topics a little bit now unless anyone's got any more. But still on AO, the ANO found more than 50% of domestic staff travel in your department was not approved as your departmental guidelines and 58% didn't even have a travel travel request associated with the trip. Have has there been any investigation onto those
Uh Senator that um audit was uh tabled in November 25. Um I do recall having some previous discussions with the committee that I think the key message was uh when for the period of the audit the uh the approvals for travel were held locally by staff so in emails. Um we've now moved to a system where that's all electronic. So we we're very comfortable that all of the travel approvals have been centralized. We've got a lot more uh assurance and coverage over that. And it's not to suggest that there weren't appropriate approvals in place at that point in time. Uh it's just that being able to locate them where staff may have uh left the agency um to be able to access those approvals that are held in email uh was was tricky at that point in time.
>> Were there any repaid funds for unapproved trips or unallocated trips or on this same point on travel, how many airline memberships does the department currently pay for? At what cost?
>> Uh so since May, Senator, we have stopped uh paying for travel memberships in line with the whole of government um decision to do that. previously uh we didn't sorry I'll sorry just a moment senator um so prior to 1 December 25 we we didn't uh actively track memberships because they were purchased on a credit card very difficult so from 1 December 2025 to the 13th of May 2026 there were 33 Three airline memberships purchased by the department.
>> Okay. But you're saying no more?
>> No more since that date.
>> Do the airlines give you well you status credits will be coming out the way for a lot of you guys. You'd get them naturally, wouldn't you? Or
>> uh so under the whole government arrangement, Senator um officials are allowed to receive status. They're not allowed to the frequent fly points.
They're not. on that point, uh how many of the senior executives work remotely