Federal budget 2025: MP lists key rail, road funding missing

If you ask one regional MP, Labor’s final budget before the 2025 election lacks funding for major projects to keep his rural heartland running. Here’s where he wants to see the cash spent.

Toowoomba’s federal member has hit out at the federal budget, claiming it’s the “worst deal Australia could be given” just weeks away from an election.

Jim Chalmers’ fourth Budget as Federal Treasurer both sets the scene for that election, to be held in May, and responds to some of the challenges facing the global economy.

Dr Chalmers has attempted to deliver a budget that reinforces a message that Labor can be trusted to steer the economy in turbulent times, at the same time as offering two tax cuts and cost of living sweeteners to voters.

But Groom MP Garth Hamilton said he believed the budget was less desirable for his regional heartland, and lacked funding for key infrastructure projects.

“I can’t see what the Labor Government has delivered (for us) in the past four Budgets, compared to the previous nine Budgets under the LNP Government,” Mr Hamilton said.

Garth Hamilton says the LNP is committed to delivering the Inland Rail Project if elected in May. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Hamilton said he was concerned for the future of centralised funding of regional programs like the Growing Regions Program and Regional Precincts and Partnerships Program.

“We need programs that deliver for our region and other regions because those areas are going to hurt the most,” he said.

“Deficits leave us with less options and (this budget) leaves nothing aside for the next 10 years, what’s going to happen if we get another cyclone or natural disaster.”

The budget reveals the deficit next year will be $42 billion, and gross debt is expected to be $940 billion at the end of the 2024/25 financial year – a record sum, but lower, the government said, than the $1.1 trillion it was forecast to be at the 2022 election.

In a blistering statement released after the budget papers went public, Mr Hamilton said the budget had specifically failed to restore funding to the New England Highway, or cash to fix the ailing Warrego or Gore Highways.

The statement also highlighted the lack of cash for the “stalled” Inland Rail, which he said the Coalition was committed to delivering if elected in May.

Originally published as Federal budget 2025: MP lists key rail, road funding missing