The federal education department has revised its hospitality policy after public servants spent thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money at fine dining restaurants.

The Shadow Education Minister senator Sarah Henderson told Senate estimates she was “deeply concerned” taxpayer money was being used to pay for the department’s staff to hold meetings at expensive restaurants.

“Holding a meeting should be in a meeting room with a cup of tea and a biscuit,” the Liberal senator said.

The department’s secretary, Tony Cook, agreed with the senator, telling estimates the department had let taxpayers down.

“It should not have happened, we should not have been utilising taxpayers’ money in those sorts of expenses,” he said.

“I think we have let the taxpayers down in terms of what they expect from public servants.”

Among the expenditures revealed include:

• $1,543 at Mezzaluna Restaurant in Sydney (average cost of $171 a person)
• $3,000 at Mabu Mabu in Melbourne (average cost of $125 a person)
• $1,209 at Courgette Restaurant in Canberra (average cost of $120 a person)

Senator Henderson said it was an “appalling” use of taxpayer money.

“These are just restaurant rorts,” she said.

“How did this happen in the first place? How could you run a department which allows this sort of flagrant waste of taxpayers’ dollars?”

Mr Cook said the department had acted by revising the department’s hospitality policy by setting limits on the money that is allowed to be spent, set at a maximum of $77 a person for dinners.

“That limit reflects the Australian Taxation Office travel allowance rates,” he said

“[It] would mean that a majority of those restaurants would be completely out of our policy.”

Mr Cook said the Education Minister Jason Clare had personally raised the matter with him at the end of January, following media reporting on some of the department’s spending.

The department’s new policy outlines that “efforts will be made to provide hospitality at a lower cost than these limits”.

Last year, Courgette chef James Mussillon was sent to jail for a second time last year on money laundering and perjury charges. The judge who made the sentence said Mr Mussillon had given the court “brazen and apparently enthusiastic falsehoods” about his links to an alleged drug dealer.