Anthony Albanese’s Anika Wells problem explodes: Why he must sack her now: Peter Van Onselen

The Anika Wells problem is now a test of Anthony Albanese’s judgment. If the PM won’t sack her, he becomes a party to her failures.

There is something almost perfectly damning about Wells’ latest indiscretion. A $337 taxpayer-funded Comcar trip of a little more than two kilometres. 

A minister, driven a distance many Australians would happily walk, at a price well under what most families spend on their weekly grocery budget, according to Canstar Blue. And the excuse Wells is using? She was ‘unexpectedly delayed’. 

Oh, and it’s all within the rules. What a joke.

This is the Anika Wells problem in miniature form by the way. She hasn’t made a single mistake or a single ambiguous claim being beaten up by her political opponents.

A pattern of behaviour has emerged, revealing a culture of entitlement so tone-deaf that it defies belief. Yet Albo won’t sack her. What does that say about him?

The latest revelations are utterly absurd. A 2.3km Comcar trip from Capital Hill in Canberra to Kingston just down the road, costing taxpayers $329. 

When I visit Canberra for parliamentary sittings I walk it, rain, hail or shine. So do most people, but not Wells. 

She charges us, and heftily so. And that was one of a number of such examples, before we even think about the longer trips with family, some of which aren’t even within the opaque rules that need changing.

Taxpayers aren’t merely funding the journeys, we’re subsidising the minister’s poor timekeeping. The defence that this all falls ‘within the rules’ is pathetic. 

The public can see what too many politicians can’t: A vast gulf between legal entitlements and acceptable judgment. There is a difference between being cleared by the entitlements paperwork versus passing the pub test.

Wells continues to fail the latter and should be sacked, if she doesn’t have the decency to step aside voluntarily.

This would be damaging enough in isolation, but for a former Minister for Aged Care (a sector where workers fight for incremental wage rises and providers stretch every dollar) it’s an even more staggering display of hubris.

Wells has already repaid more than $10,000 after the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority found four family travel claims breached the rules. 

She called them honest mistakes. Perhaps. But ministers don’t get endless reserves of public forgiveness when the mistakes keep happening and taxpayers are picking up the tab.

The rap sheet of questionable optics keeps getting longer. Family travel built around the AFL Grand Final. Swearing-in travel that breached the rules. 

 Hire car claims where only a fraction of the trip involved parliamentary business. 

Trips to Thredbo and major sporting events, that while technically permissible look ridiculous outside of the Canberra bubble.

It’s just all so dodgy, yet Albo won’t sack her.

Then came the expensive international travel, including a New York excursion to promote a social media ban, with costs escalating into the tens of thousands of dollars. 

Ministers always have explanations for spending our money. The question is whether the public is obliged to keep swallowing the excuses that Albo finds acceptable.

Wells is a perfect case study highlighting the widening gap between the political class and the public that funds it.

Australians are paying higher mortgages, dealing with higher rents, higher power bills, and higher taxes. 

They are told government budgets are tight and difficult choices must be made. Then they watch a minister like Wells bill them hundreds of dollars to travel a few blocks, only repaying wrongly claimed family expenses when caught out by an audit.

Albo wonders why voters are abandoning the major parties. This is one of the reasons. 

The latest Newspoll should terrify Labor. 

The Prime Minister’s dissatisfaction rating has hit 60 per cent, levels not seen since the Tony Abbott era. Minor parties are surging as Labor bleeds primary support.

Voters aren’t merely irritated by policy decisions, they are losing faith in the political class itself. The only thing masking Albo’s failures is the diabolical state of that Coalition.

Every day that the PM leaves Wells in the ministry, he owns her poor judgment. What standard does he expect of his cabinet? At what point does repeatedly poor judgment become disqualifying?

Albo built his brand on being decent, careful, and grounded. That image won’t survive the indulgence of this bad behaviour, if it’s managed to survive the litany of lies at the election unmarked by the decisions in the recent budget.

If Wells is the standard that Albo accepts that says everything about how low he is willing to go. 

Wells may well insist that she acted within the rules. But Australians apply the standard of common sense. They know when they are being taken for mugs, and it’s Albo doing that now the longer he stands by her.

He should have already sacked her because the accumulated record reveals a minister with terrible instincts and a tin ear for the cost of living pressures her government claims to understand. 

At some point, politics has got to be about more than survival, which we all know is the reason Albo won’t sack her. 

He doesn’t want to fire the starting gun on letting ministers go for bad behaviour. 

He’d rather they behave badly than deal with the optics of sackings.

What does that say about this PM’s standards?