Australia news live: Albanese defends Anika Wells over taxpayer-funded travel expenses; ‘strong and erratic’ winds a challenge for NSW firefighters

Albanese says communications minister’s family trip to Thredbo was ‘completely within rules’. Follow the day’s news liveGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAlbanese 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. Continue reading...