Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has declared he would have “sh*t himself” if he had run up Defence Minister Richard Marles’ $3 million bill for VIP private flights and called on the MP to explain “where the hell he’s been flying.”
Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles has raised eyebrows in Canberra after news.com.au revealed he had run up more than a million dollars in flight costs since January alone.
But Mr Marles won’t reveal where he has been flying or if he’s been ordering flights to pick him up and drop him off at Avalon airport. The airport is closer to his Geelong home base, allowing Mr Marles to skip the traffic in his chauffeur-driven Comcar.
Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, himself a former deputy prime minister, said he was gobsmacked by the spending.
“It’s a bit rich to suggest he’s a big security risk. I am sorry Richard, you are going to have to explain this,’’ Mr Joyce told news.com.au
“I can understand fully when you’re the acting prime minister, you require armed guards and that means a VIP flight.
“This is not for the deputy PM just when he knocks off work. I would sh*t myself if I got a bill like that. And you’ve got to give an explanation.
“I think people have had enough of people getting millions of dollars, asking for millions of dollars. People are over these ‘I work in Canberra therefore don’t question anything I say.’”
While a good deal of the travel is believed to be for international flights in Mr Marles’s role as defence minister, Melbourne MPs claimed Mr Marles was rarely seen on domestic flights and was believed to be regularly using Royal Australian Air Force flights, which cost taxpayers up to $8,000 an hour, simply to fly home to Melbourne.
“Look, when I was deputy prime minister I was definitely taking commercial flights,” Mr Joyce said.
A spokesperson for Mr Marles said she would not reveal where he had travelled on the $3 million-plus worth of taxpayer-funded flights.
“All travel conducted by the Deputy Prime Minister either in his role as Defence Minister or as Acting Prime Minister is in accordance with the relevant guidelines and security procedures,” the spokesperson said.
Mr Marles’ office noted the Special Purpose Aircraft Guidelines for disclosure had been revised as a result of a security review led by the Australian Federal Police.
The review found that “the Special Purpose Aircraft Guidelines are not currently fit-for-purpose in regards to protecting security sensitivities, including demonstrating a protection of pattern-of-life data for passengers”.
Richard Marles’s VIP flight bill of $3.6 million follows the Victorian MP openly mocking former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop for taking a single helicopter trip from Melbourne to Geelong in 2015.
Mr Marles high flying habits have even involved spending double the amount the Prime Minister spent in the final quarter of 2022, when he ran up a stunning $936,604 bill between October and December alone.
This year alone, Mr Marles has run up a VIP flight bill for private RAAF planes worth $1,346,381. Last year, Mr Marles spent $2,275,060.
But it was a different story nearly a decade ago when Mr Marles raged over the decision of the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop to use a VIP helicopter to fly to Geelong.
“Recently, the country dropped its collective jaw at the arrogance of Speaker Bronwyn Bishop using taxpayer money to fly in a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong,” he wrote.
Mr Marles said she “absolutely should know better.”
“The notion of being so out of touch with how the rest of the country goes about life is one of the biggest breaches of faith a politician can commit,” he said.
“Not surprisingly, we have yet to hear what local the Liberal leadership think of Mrs Bishop’s extravagant entrance. Though on the weekend, we did hear from Mrs Bishop in a jaw dropping press conference, where she pretty much insisted she did nothing wrong and described the attacks on her as a ‘political beat up’.
“I’m not sure what circles Mrs Bishop moves in, but for the people that I have been speaking to, this saga represents what the community dislikes most about politics and politicians.
“I think if Mrs Bishop had asked for feedback from any of us who do the trip from Geelong to Melbourne and vice versa by car, she would have got the kind of feedback that probably isn’t fit to print. It is staggering that someone who is supposed to serve the people thought it would pass any kind of test to charter a helicopter from Melbourne to Geelong and expect voters to pick up the tab,” Mr Marles said.
On Friday, news.com.au revealed Anthony Albanese had 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.
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.
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 salary of $108,900.
But the government is refusing to say where he went or who he took on the plane as guests, citing “security issues”, despite the fact the flights took place up to a year ago and the material was previously published for decades.
The Albanese Government now claims that the material can no longer be published for safety reasons, due to a review that was quietly initiated by the Morrison Government after it was repeatedly embarrassed by the VIP flight logs being published online — including the scandal that ended the career of Bronwyn Bishop.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who lodged the original FOI request to reveal the data, urged the Albanese government to return to the publication of all VIP flights in the interests of “transparency”.
“When people are facing serious cost-of-living pressures, having politicians tell them their flights are so special, expensive and secret that they can’t know the details really doesn’t cut it,” Mr Shoebridge told news.com.au.
“The idea that telling us where politicians flew last year is a serious security risk is hard to swallow. In most cases the politicians put up an Instagram post or media release when they land.
“These are meant to be ‘special’ flights, so if there is a repeating pattern of flights then this is an issue in itself. In previous years these ‘patterns’ have indicated potential misuse of the flights for personal or political campaigning rather than urgent public interest work.
“We will be pressing for the release of this specific information about flights because transparency protects those doing the right thing as much as it embarrasses those who step out of line.”