The attorney general, George Brandis, spent $1,100 of public money on a dinner during an official visit to London, freedom of information documents requested by Labor show.
Fairfax media reported that Brandis, who is also the arts minister, ordered expensive bottles of Australian wine while dining with an undisclosed number of British arts representatives at the Massimo restaurant on 4 April.
The dinner cost £627 ($1,119), of which £228 ($407) was spent on alcohol, the documents show.
Brandis’s office could not be contacted for comment, but earlier defended the cost of the meal to Fairfax.
“It’s usual practice for senior cabinet ministers to host dinners for important stakeholders within their portfolios,” a spokesman said. “On this occasion the attorney general and minister for arts hosted key UK senior arts representatives.”
Labor’s spokesman on waste, Pat Conroy, said on his Facebook page the amount spent was “obscene”, especially as it came just weeks before the tough federal budget in which the government introduced cuts to public spending.
“To spend over $400 of taxpayers’ money on wine is unpardonable, especially at the same time as the government is making people pay more at the doctors and petrol pump,” he told Fairfax.
Brandis paid back nearly $1,700 shortly after coming to office for claiming parliamentary expenses to travel to the 2011 wedding of radio host Michael Smith.
In February, Senate estimates revealed that Brandis spent $15,000 of taxpayers’ money on building a new bookshelf in his ministerial office.
In January 2012, London’s Daily Telegraph gave Massimo a scathing review, saying “such paeans to marble-sanitised vulgarity may be perfect for lobbyists to entertain their prey” but its “mix of the flashy and the desultory had nothing to offer the set-menu diner other than outrageous drinks prices ... confused service and sullen mediocrity”.
