PM announces $7.2bn investment in Bruce Highway

In his first media appearance of the election year, Anthony Albanese noted he was standing in the federal electorate of Wide Bay, not a target seat, and said this showed he was ‘determined to represent all Australians’.

Anthony Albanese on Noosa road beside the Bruce Highway. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Anthony Albanese has announced $7.2bn in new funding for the Bruce Highway in Queensland. In his first media appearance of the election year, the Prime Minister made it a point to note he was standing in the federal electorate of Wide Bay, not a target seat, and said this showed he was “determined to represent all Australians”.

“The 2025 election will be a clear choice,” he said, flanked by Jim Chalmers, Employment Minister Murray Watt, and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King.

“Labor building Australia’s future, or a Coalition determined to return Australia backwards and costing more under Peter Dutton.”

Announcing the new investment, Mr Albanese said the frequency of car collisions on the road was “quite horrific” and that it was a “priority”.

“That’s why we’re singling out this highway above all others to contribute 80 per cent funding, rather than the 50 per cent that is standard across other road and rail projects across not just Queensland, but around the country, because this is a special piece of highway,” he said.

“It’s a dangerous piece of highway that needs upgrading.”

Mr Albanese dodged questions on multiple occasions about whether the government was considering new sources of income such as tax to fund spending.

“What we need to do is to make sure that every single dollar of expenditure is expenditure that is well worth it,” he said.

“And the investment in this road is worth it.

“For those who say that it’s not – and the Coalition have $315 billion in which they say is wasteful expenditure, what that means is cuts to the indexing of pensions. That means cuts to infrastructure. It means cuts to the cheaper medicines, including the 60-day policy.

“It means abolition of the Future Made in Australia program of jobs and manufacturing and making things here in Queensland. It means no support for energy price relief. That’s the choice that Australians have. What we do, what we do is make sure that we deliver.”

Mr Albanese also characterised the opposition’s nuclear energy plan as a “Soviet-style command economy of the energy system”.