Premier Mark McGowan has admitted having to take his three children to work with him on taxpayer-funded flights because he couldn’t find a babysitter.

He used a government-owned Hawker jet on four occasions to take his family on weekend trips to Exmouth and Albany and a one-week fly-drive visit to the Pilbara.

In Exmouth, Mr McGowan opened the Ningaloo Visitors Centre and spoke at the 50th anniversary of the Harold E. Holt radio communications station.

Mr McGowan visited Albany for the Anzac Day dawn service and later on May 26. The six-day Pilbara trip took in Newman, Karijini, Port Hedland and Karratha.

He said all four were work trips and his wife Sarah accompanied him in her role as an official literacy and reading ambassador.

“My wife Sarah is performing an important public responsibility,” Mr McGowan said.

“We took the children because we didn’t have any other way of looking after them on those occasions.”

The State Opposition said the trips were holidays masquerading as official business at taxpayer expense.

Camera Icon Alannah MacTiernan at the Leeuwin Estate concert last year. Credit: The West Australian

WA Liberal deputy leader Liza Harvey said the jets were made available so that the Premier and other ministers could perform their duties in regional areas.

“It’s not a perk or an entitlement to be used to take your family on a junket,” she said.

More questions have been raised about Agriculture Minister Alannah MacTiernan’s use of government planes to visit Albany, where she owns a holiday home, on multiple occasions.

Ms MacTiernan has confirmed she flew her Japanese-speaking son and grandson to Albany in a government aircraft last Anzac Day to help host a delegation of Japanese government officials.

She is a prolific user of the plane and on one occasion had it fly her from Karratha and drop her in Albany on a Friday. The plane returned to Perth without her.

She also flew from her holiday home in Albany to Margaret River to attend the 2018 Leeuwin Estate concert. Her spokesman she also attended a community meeting in Witchcliffe.