Frequent Flyer Anthony Albanese’s $5 million ride

Globe-trotting Anthony Albanese has rung up a staggering bill for his VIP flights since he was elected last year

Globe-trotting Anthony Albanese has rung up a $5 million bill for VIP flights since he was elected last year spending an average of $88,000 a week on flights.

After a long delay in publishing records of the taxpayer-funded flights, the Defence Department quietly posted the RAAF squadron VIP flight records on Friday afternoon.

The records confirm Mr Albanese is the nation’s biggest VIP flight frequent flyer and that he has rung up a $1,872,148 bill for flights from January to June of 2023 alone.

Anthony Albanese and his partner Jodie Haydon arrive at the National Memorial Service for Queen Elizabeth II in London. Picture: Martin Ollman/Getty Images

The total spend from April 2022 to July 2023 was over $5 million or an average of $88,000 a week.

The first 18 months of the Prime Minister’s first term were accompanied with a busy schedule of international travel to meet world leaders including to Ukraine, Japan, Indonesia, Spain, France and Fiji.

Albo arrives at Haneda airport in Tokyo on May 23, 2022. Picture: AFP

Here he is in Fiji. Picture: AFP

It means the Prime Minister is spending more than the average annual salary – $68,900 – every week on VIP flights. Skilled and experienced workers in Australia earn an average of $108,900.

The Prime Minister used a VIP flight to travel to the Queen’s funeral in September 2022, shunning the UK’s demands for foreign heads of state to fly commercially.

The UK Foreign Office had asked those invited to avoid using private jets to arrive in the UK for the funeral blaming “tight security and road restrictions”.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles defended the decision at the time on the grounds that Australian prime ministers did not use commercial flights because of security concerns.

“That has to be the paramount consideration here. And I might add that that’s not just a consideration from the point of view of the security of the Prime Minister, it’s also about the security of the public,” Marles told ABC’s Radio National.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern attended the Queen’s funeral on a commercial flight.

Albo in Suva, Fiji. Picture: Joe Armao – Pool/Getty Images

Among the guests who travelled on board the VIP flight with the PM were Governor-General David Hurley, and nine “everyday Australians” including tennis legend and Australian of the Year Dylan Alcott, Young Australian of the Year Dr Trudy Lin and Senior Australian of the Year Valmai Dempsey.

Racing identities Gai and Robbie Waterhouse, who were invited due to their connection to the Queen’s horses, were unable to secure commercial flights so were also invited to join the flight.

But the biggest spending year was 2022, where the use of the VIP flights to ferry around Scott Morrison and the Labor leader to campaign during the election cost millions of dollars.

From April 2022 to December, Mr Albanese ran up a bill of $3,433,918. The figures include expenditure of $498,485 in October to December, $810,744 from July to September, and over $1.3 million in VIP flights during the election and in the aftermath.

Over the same election period, former Prime Minister Scott Morrison spent a similar amount.