Australia news live: Anika Wells defends $100k US trip saying ‘I had to be in two places at once’; NSW firefighters take advantage of easing conditions

Communications minister says she ‘genuinely chose the option where I thought I could discharge my duties in both areas’. Follow the day’s news live

Albanese has also defended a $100k expense for communications minister Anika Wells, a staffer and a public servant to join the prime minister and foreign minister Penny Wong in New York for a United Nations meeting.

Anika Wells was doing her job as the communications minister who is in charge of this world-leading, world-leading legislation, passed with bipartisan support, to give credit to Peter Dutton when he was opposition leader. And it was an important event. And it wasn’t just the event there, it was then the follow-up of people wanting to have meetings, have discussions, how is this going to work? What can we do to get buy-in here? When you’ve got Australia, a middle power, taking on these global giants.

There’s family reunion entitlements, all of the travel within guidelines.

I’m saying it was within entitlements and Anika Wells was working on that trip as sports minister, participating the lifting up of para-sport.

But we’ve said very clearly that this won’t be perfect. Just like chances last night was Saturday night, somewhere in Australia, somewhere under 18s got a drink in a pub. But it’s the right thing to do for society to express its views, its judgement about what is appropriate.

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