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You won’t believe how much ‘Tarmac’ has spent on flights in just one year.

Anthony Albanese has spent $3.7m on air travel in 12 months since becoming Prime Minister. They don’t call him Airbus Albo for nothing.

I’m not upset by the number of flights. I’m annoyed they kept issuing him with return tickets.

In just three months, from April 1 to June 30 this year, Albanese racked up $953,904 in flight costs.

The RAAF jet doesn’t come cheap. He should be made to keep his flights under $275 a year.

But more interesting than cost is time spent in the air. During the aforementioned three-month period, RAAF planes were tasked with 103.9 hours of domestic flying and 81.7 hours of international flying for the PM.

That’s quite the carbon footprint. Like the government’s proposed misinformation and disinformation bill, emissions reduction doesn’t apply to him.

Meanwhile, Sydney City Council wants to stop me from driving my car into the city because (drum roll) ‘global boiling’.

Maybe if the PM got a solar-powered jet?

Double Standards

I don’t begrudge the Prime Minister flying around the world. It’s his job to represent Australia, and he should be at liberty to do whatever he needs to do in that regard, wherever the role takes him.

But don’t tell us — on the one hand — that we must eat bugs, quit cooking with gas, convert our agricultural land into solar farms and leave our cars at home because if we don’t, the planet will self-combust, while you zig-zag the globe belching avgas emissions into the atmosphere.

It’s either a climate emergency or it’s not.

We are either on a “climate highway to hell”, as UN Chicken Little In-Chief Antonio Guterres claimed, or actually, it’s not that bad really.

‘Ah but …’ I hear you say, ‘the PM’s job is very important and requires him to fly. Whereas your job as a checkout chick at Coles does not necessitate that you drive a car to work.’

This is the very argument that Bill Gates used when asked earlier this year to justify his extensive use of private jets.

“I’m comfortable with the idea that not only am I not part of the problem… but also — through the billions that my Breakthrough Energy Group is spending — that I’m part of the solution,” he said.

Ah yes. Unlike you and I, Bill Gates is doing very, very important work.

And besides, he’s a billionaire. He crisscrosses the world in a private jet because he is part of the solution. You ought not to fly at all because you are part of the problem.

Are you awake yet?

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Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.

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Photo by Soly Moses.