While many Queenslanders were struggling to keep a roof over their head, Queensland Communities Minister Leeanne Enoch was jet-setting around North America in business class with three senior staffers.
Documents obtained by Nine News under right to information laws reveal the trip, led by Enoch, whose other ministerial responsibilities include Treaty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, and the Arts, cost more than $126,000.
The Minister for Treaty, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Communities and the Arts, Leeanne Enoch.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The 10-day trip, taking in New York, Edmonton and Vancouver for the purposes of “cultural diplomacy”, was approved by former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Enoch was accompanied by director-general Clare O’Connor, department executive director Paul O’Driscoll, and the minister’s chief of staff, Felix Gibson.
The study tour was summarised in a document tabled to Queensland parliament in December, but the full costs have not been released until now.
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Enoch has never issued a press release or posted to her social media accounts about it.
It began on October 27 with business-class flights on Air Canada from Brisbane to New York, where the four stayed at the trendy Moxy Hotel in Times Square for three nights, costing about $US430 per person, per night.
While in New York, the group visited The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art), the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the United Nations.
