A key meeting linked to Communications Minister Anika Wells’ controversial $3,681 taxpayer-funded Adelaide trip was not recorded in another minister’s released diary.
Wells told the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) she held a ‘sideline meeting’ with South Australian Health Minister Chris Picton at his wife Connie Blefari’s birthday party in June last year.
Wells said the meeting ended at 7.45pm, which IPEA accepted as a reasonable basis for her to remain in Adelaide overnight before returning to Brisbane.
However, excerpts from Picton’s ministerial diary, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, do not specifically record any meeting with Wells.
The diary is marked ‘personal affairs’ from 5pm onwards and does not name Wells.
Records show Wells travelled from Brisbane to Adelaide on June 6, 2025, and returned on June 8.
During the trip, she visited a school and met Trade Minister Don Farrell.
She also told IPEA that she had been scheduled to meet Picton on June 7 before attending Blefari’s birthday celebration later that evening.
In her submission to IPEA, Wells said the planned meeting was delayed after discussions with Farrell ran overtime and instead took place during the private event.
But the FOI documents do not explicitly reference the meeting.
An entry beginning at 3pm is marked as personal and has been redacted, while Picton’s diary indicates his only publicly listed official engagement that day was a media appearance on ambulance ramping at the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
However, Wells and Picton have denied that the absence of the ‘sideline’ meeting in the released diary undermines her account.
A South Australian government spokesperson told Daily Mail that the meeting took place and said the released documents did not tell the full story.
The spokesperson said it was ‘standard practice’ to remove names from personal diary entries released under FOI laws and that Wells’ name had been redacted for privacy reasons.
‘Minister Wells’ Adelaide travel including her meeting with Minister Picton was clearly detailed in the Federal IPEA report in May,’ the spokesperson said.
‘Exactly as Minister Wells informed IPEA, the Ministers were unable to meet during the day and met during a function that evening.’
The spokesperson added that personal details, including names, addresses and phone numbers, are routinely removed from documents released under South Australia’s FOI laws.
A spokeswoman for Wells also defended the minister’s account, telling Daily Mail that ‘nothing had changed’.
‘As outlined in the IPEA report, the Ministers were due to meet at this time,’ she said.
The latest questions over Wells’ travel claims come after she became embroiled in a taxpayer-funded travel controversy late last year, when it emerged more than $100,000 had been spent flying her and a staff member to New York to promote the federal government’s social media ban for under-16s at a United Nations event.
The controversy triggered broader scrutiny of Wells’ use of official travel and family reunion entitlements, prompting the minister to refer herself to IPEA for an audit.
The audit found Wells had incorrectly claimed expenses relating to four trips between 2022 and 2025.
IPEA identified $8,092.89 in inappropriate travel and hire-car claims, including $5,513 for family flights taken before her 2022 swearing-in and $726 for her husband’s flight home after the 2025 AFL Grand Final.
A 25 per cent penalty loading of $2,023.22 took the total repayment bill to more than $10,000.
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