Stuart Robert had multiple notifications about excess internet data costs he charged to taxpayers
Stuart Robert received pages of bills noting excess data charges, adding up to hundreds of gigabytes a month and thousands of dollars, his mobile broadband bills reveal.
In 2018 the MP, who was then the assistant treasurer and is now the government services minister, repaid almost $38,000 he had charged taxpayers for internet access for his Gold Coast home in 2016.
It was revealed the minister was charging up to $3,000 a month for his internet connection, about 20 times the average cost for internet for MPs.
At the time, the minister said he was only able to access mobile broadband services that had limited monthly downloads available, and he had switched to a 4G connection because “my family home is located a significant distance from the telephone exchange, resulting in poor connectivity”.
“My internet, like many in semirural areas, was previously unreliable, which interfered with my ability to perform my parliamentary and ministerial duties.”
The bills, obtained under freedom of information laws, reveal the minister would have been alerted many times over the course of months about his excess data usage.
The three documents reveal Robert received several pages of bills noting hundreds of excess data charges, with the largest in 2016.
Robert was provided 80GB worth of data on his plan every month, but went over his limit often hundreds of times, with each 1GB block charged at $10 each.
It is understood that customers on plans such as Robert’s were alerted via text and email when they reached 50%, 75% and 100% of their monthly quota, and each time an excess data charge was added, unless they opted out.
In one month, Robert used 387GB of data.
For comparison, in late 2015, NBN reported the average user on its fixed broadband service was downloading about 112GB.
The figure is now 258GB of data per month.
Robert would have received hundreds of notifications that he was going over his allocated data, if he had them turned on.
The bills were approved by the Department of Finance noting it was “correctly rendered and within entitlement”, but Robert ultimately agreed to pay back the money.
A spokesman for Robert told Guardian Australia the minister repaid the bill two years ago and the matter was “dealt with”.
A freedom of information request was filed in 2018 for some of the inter
net bills. The Department of Finance agreed to release them in late 2018 but a third party, believed to be Robert or his office, objected to the release, and took the case to the Australian information commissioner for review.
More than 18 months later, and before the commissioner had taken submissions on the review, the third party withdrew the request.
Robert did not respond to questions on why the review had been sought.