Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's $3.75 million special purpose RAAF flights spend

By comparison, former prime minister Scott Morrison spent around $3 million during his first 14 months in the top job, analysis by ACM, publisher of this newspaper, of previous special-purpose flight logs shows.

"This is an eyewatering bill to fly senior politicians around in VIP flights," Greens senator David Shoebridge, who requested the documents under FOI, said in a statement on Friday afternoon.

"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,"

The latest slate of special-purpose aircraft schedules - published on the Department of Defence's website late Friday - revealed Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles took more than $2.9 million worth of special-purpose RAAF flights during the same period.

Governor-General David Hurley and Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong were also among the government's heaviest hitters, racking up bills worth almost $2 million and $1.45 million, respectively.

Royal Australian Air Force special purpose jets are understood to cost around $4600 an hour to operate.

Asked how the Prime Minister justified spending $3.75 million in taxpayer money on these special-purpose flights, a government spokesperson responded "special-purpose aircraft are used for a variety of reasons, including transporting other parliamentarians".

The Defence Department previously published six-monthly reports detailing politicians' use of the RAAF's VIP jet fleet, but this stopped in 2021 due to security concerns.

Senator Shoebridge sought the missing documents under FOI in May this year, but faced repeated requests from the Department to push back the deadline.

The Information Commissioner eventually stepped in ordered the production of documents, writing that the request did not "appear to be particularly complex" and citing the "limited available evidence of work undertaken by the department to process the FOI request".

Unlike the department's previous reports, the latest documents released on Friday do not contain details around the dates, destinations and passengers on individual flights.

Senator Shoebridge dubbed the refusal to provide these details as a "very convenient way to avoid serious scrutiny".

"It's hard to see what credible security risk there is from telling us where politicians were flown to 12 months ago," he said.

A Defence spokesperson said the department has been working with the Australian Federal Police "to undertake a security review of the 2013 guidelines for the use of special-purpose aircraft".

The Canberra Times understands future special-purpose aircraft schedules - detailing the cost in flights taken - will be published quarterly and tabled in Parliament twice a year herein.