Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has spent $4m chartering RAAF jets

Anthony Albanese and his ministry have seized the opportunity to use VIP flights with the taxpayer being slugged millions for the privilege.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has spent a staggering $4 million chartering RAAF jets around the world and across Australia since taking on the top job, with more than 370 hours spent in the air this year alone.

Adding the flights undertaken in his time as Opposition leader, the taxpayer cost surges to more than $5 million.

Department of Defence documents released Friday show the Albanese ministry has also seized the opportunity to use VIP flights to get around with more than $6 million spent so far this year.

However, the public has no way of knowing just where Mr Albanese and his ministers have been travelling to with a “security review” undertaken by Defence keeping the destinations of the trips private.

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The high cost of Anthony Albanese’s travel budget has been revealed. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

The Schedule of Special Purpose Flights logs were released in response to a freedom of information request from Greens senator David Shoebridge.

The logs were previously made publicly available every six months with the tabled documents including details of the destinations and the names of passengers.

Upon requesting the flight information earlier this year, a Defence spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph the flight data was subject to a “security review”.

Describing the flight bill as “eye-watering”, Mr Shoebridge said the decision by Defence to withhold destination details was clearly being done to avoid scrutiny.

“For a government that promised transparency they sure have needed their arms twisted to spill the beans on these VIP flights,” he said.

“This is an eye-watering bill to fly senior politicians around in VIP flights.

“Of course there’s a need to fly the PM around for official duties, but this PM is billing taxpayers harder and faster for VIP flights than any before him.”

Mr Shoebridge said the claim destination details posed a security risk was laughable given the flights had already been undertaken.

The previous release of destination and passenger information has enabled News Corp to previously analyse how many politicians had charted costly solo flights with the “ghost” jet travelling empty back to its base.

It will also not be possible to analyse whether the flight was for person or work purposes, with this publication previously publishing details of politicians slipping off to family farms at Christmas.

The released logs for the period of 2021 to end of June this year showed Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles to also be a frequent VIP traveller, burning up almost $3 million in VIP flights since coming into government.

Add $660,173 in flights he took as Deputy opposition leader between April and May last year as the total figure rises to $3.6 million.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has clearly been careful with his carbon footprint, with his VIP flights amounting to just over $95,000.

Pollies also took to using RAAF jets to ferry them around during the election campaign with Scott Morrison’s flights costing $263,420 plus an additional $1.2 million for support staff and Mr Albanese’s amounting to $198,958 with $1.4 million paying for support.