In the first major promise of the election year, Anthony Albanese has announced $7.2bn in funding for Queensland’s Bruce Highway.
The federal government will fund 80% of the upgrades, with the state funding 20%.
In 2023 the infrastructure minister, Catherine King, sparked a war of words with the then Labor-led sunshine state by defunding $449.5m in transport projects and announcing an end to the default 80-20 funding split.
King said the change would “end the perverse incentives that saw the Federal Coalition throw money at projects that states did not want to build”.
In an announcement outside Gympie on Monday, the prime minister denied the new funding was a backflip or that it would undermine the 50-50 split in future.
“The figures are quite horrific,” he said. “Forty-one fatalities on the Bruce Highway in 2024.
“That’s why this is a priority. That’s why we’re singling out this highway above all others to contribute 80% funding rather than the 50% that is standard across other road and rail projects.”
Flanked by two Queenslanders, the federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the minister for employment, Murray Watt, Albanese said the decision was not about political benefit.
“Someone said to me, ‘Why are you making the first announcement of this year in the electorate of Wide Bay? It’s not a target seat,’” he said. “That’s because I’m determined to represent all Australians, regardless of where they live.”
The prime minister said he had spoken with the state’s Liberal National party premier, David Crisafulli, about the policy on Sunday night, and both were keen to start construction as soon as possible.
He said the priority area was the road north of Gympie, a notorious black spot. The money will also fund upgrades between Maryborough and Benaraby, Rockhampton and St Lawrence, Bowen and Townsville, and Ingham and Innisfail.
Albanese said the 2025 federal election – which must be held by May – would pit a Labor government “building Australia’s future” against “a Coalition determined to return Australia backwards” led by Peter Dutton.
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Queensland is the federal opposition’s strongest state, with Labor holding just five of Queensland’s 30 lower house seats. Both Dutton and deputy opposition leader, David Littleproud, are Queenslanders.
A veteran Gympie paramedic, Wayne Sachs, said it was the second time Albanese had intervened to order an upgrade of the Bruce.
He said he’d attended hundreds or even thousands of accidents on the road, many of them fatal. But it was the death of a little girl from Bundaberg in 2009 that was the final straw.
“I had kids around the same age,” he said. “It just affected me a little bit. So I thought I’ve got to do something about it.”
In 2009 Sachs met with Albanese, who was infrastructure minister at the time.
The paramedic, who has celebrated 50 years behind the wheel of an ambulance, said he had convinced Albanese to prioritise the upgrade of a section of the road south of Gympie.
“Three months later he announced that it moved from Infrastructure Australia priority number 26 to number one,” he said.
Sachs said the bypass no longer had a significant number of fatal accidentsand hundreds of lives had been saved.