A Victorian Labor MP has been criticised for spending $23,000 in taxpayer funds on a 15-day trip to Africa during a cost-of-living crisis – despite having a tiny number of African constituents.
Bronwyn Halfpenny, the MP for Thomastown in Melbourne’s north, split the costs of the trip to Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon in September last year across two financial years to get around the annual overseas travel cap, and said six nights were free as she she stayed with a mysterious “family friend”.
Ms Halfpenny did not break any rules by lodging half of the costs in 2024-25 and half this financial year in order to maximise her taxpayer benefit, but the move has upset fellow Labor MPs, who said it did not “look great” as residents struggle financially, the Herald Sun reported.
Her colleagues are also understood to be unhappy with Ms Halfpenny’s failure to identify the friend she stayed with, and questioned why she took the trip at all, since her electorate does not have a sizeable population from any African country.
The Opposition has also criticised Ms Halfpenny over the trip, with Liberal MP Janes Newbury saying: “Taxpayers are being taken for mugs.”
The MP, who regularly shares photos of herself celebrating foreign festivals and has a “free Palestine” poster on her office window, only mentioned the Africa visit once in parliament.
“During a recent visit to Abuja in Nigeria and Accra in Ghana it became obvious that there are many opportunities, along with the goodwill of those who I met, to further develop trade, investment, education and cultural exchanges,’’ she said.
Ms Halfpenny did not post about the trip on her own social media accounts, but she was mentioned by the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission on LinkedIn.
“NIPC, under the leadership of ES/CEO Ms Aisha Rimi, welcomed Hon. Bronwyn Halfpenny, MP for Victoria, Australia, to Abuja,” the government department wrote.
“The conversation unlocked bold opportunities in education, health, agriculture, skills transfer, mining, and tech innovation—all geared towards deeper collaboration and stronger partnerships.”
She was also pictured visiting the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A state government spokesperson said all of the spending – $11,153 lodged in the final quarter of 2024/25 for Africa travel, and then $11,410 in the second quarter of 2025/26 for accommodation – was above board.
The state electorate of Thomastown was 46.8% Australian-born at the time of the 2021 Census, with another 9.7% born in India, 4.4% in Italy, 3.7% in North Macedonia, 3.1% in Vietnam, and 2.6% in Greece.
In the suburb of Thomastown, which makes up about a quarter of the electorate’s population, the largest African population was Somalian with 104 people, followed by 15 from Ethiopia.
Header image: Left, right, Ms Halfpenny in Nigeria (LinkedIn).
