Anthony Albanese has kicked off his pre-election three-state tour by announcing Labor will contribute $7.2 billion to a $9 billion upgrade of Queensland’s Bruce Highway. The upgrade is welcome. However, agreeing to fund 80 per cent of the cost is a departure from Labor’s push for state governments to pay for at least 50 per cent of the cost of road and transport projects.

When this intention was announced by Transport Minister Catherine King at The Australian Financial Review Infrastructure Summit in 2023, she also flagged restricting the federal government’s involvement in infrastructure funding to major projects of “national significance”. This sounded like Labor following through on its 2022 election pledge to stop the Coalition’s infrastructure “rorts and waste”.