Anthony Albanese’s special purpose flights total almost $4m in first year as PM

Anthony Albanese spent almost $4 million on VIP flights during his first year as Prime Minister, as Labor is criticised for a lack of transparency around international travel expenses.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travelled to Tokyo for the Quad meeting with US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra just days after the 2022 election. Picture: AFP

Anthony Albanese spent almost $4 million on VIP flights during his first year as Prime Minister, as Labor is criticised for a lack of transparency around international travel expenses.

The new special purpose flights figures released by the Defence Department on Wednesday only capture the first 13 months of the Albanese Government, meaning the PM’s travel bill is considerably higher when factoring in recent trips to China, the US twice, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Cook Islands.

Analysis of the figures shows Mr Albanese travelled 371.7 hours domestically and 346.4 internationally on special purpose military flights costing a total of $3,915,886 as of June 2023.

Earlier this year Defence revealed it would only publish the quarterly cost of special flights taken by ministers, and not information on where the planes were flying or who was on board, due to security advice.

The July to September period in 2022 was the Prime Minister’s highest spending quarter with $1.02m worth of flights, which included travel to Madrid, Spain for the NATO summit and to Paris to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Madrid for the NATO Summit in July 2022. Picture” AAP Image/Lukas Coch

On this same trip he also travelled to Kyiv to show Australia’s support for Ukraine in the war against Russia.

The figures also show as of June 2023, Defence Minister and Deputy PM Richard Marles spent $2,435,694 on special purpose flights.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited every Pacific Island nation in her first year in the role. Picture: DFAT

This included travel throughout the Indo-Pacific, trips to the US and UK as a part of AUKUS, as well as meetings with Defence officials in Japan and South Korea.

Over the same time period Foreign Minister Penny Wong spent $1,168,038, which included visiting every Pacific and South East Asian nation, except Myanmar, as well as a historic bilateral trip to Beijing, China and attending major summits like the Quad meeting in Tokyo, Japan.

Trade Minister Don Farrell spent $558,304 on VIP flights as of June 2023.

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps meeting in California earlier this month. Picture: Josh Edelson/AFP

Acting Opposition leader Sussan Ley criticised the lack of transparency around the special flight data.

“Anthony Albanese said his government would be the most transparent in history, but instead we see continuous efforts to hide the use of taxpayer funds from appropriate scrutiny,” she said.

“With every day that passes, Anthony Albanese’s Labor government finds new and convenient reasons to hide details about their overseas travel – it begs the question, if the travel is in the national interest then why would they try to hide it?”

Greens defence spokesman Senator David Shoebridge said it was “shocking” to see how quickly Labor had “lost its passion for transparency” since coming into government.

“Senior Ministers are taking these VIP flights at an eye-watering cost and providing scant details to the public,” he said.

“These are meant to be special purpose flights, if they reveal “pattern of life” information that’s probably a sign they are not being used for ‘special purposes’.

“What makes Defence’s argument even less credible is that once these planes land most of the MPs jump off and post about where they are on Instagram.”

Other special purpose flight costs included $7,445 to fly Australian academic Sean Turnell home after negotiating his release from prison in Myanmar.

During the 2022 federal election taxpayers also forked out $224,410 for former prime minister Scott Morrison and $204,580 for Mr Albanese to travel around the country campaigning.

Originally published as Anthony Albanese’s special purpose flights total almost $4m in first year as PM