Anthony Albanese wide of the target? No, it’s just politics

The Prime Minister is opening the year by reviving his pre-2022 election pitch that he is a politician of conviction, as he puts a $873bn price tag on Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy.

Anthony Albanese arrives in Gympie for a Bruce Highway announcement on day one of his first campaign tour of 2025 on Monday. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

It was no mistake that Anthony Albanese’s first on-the-ground campaigning in 2025 was spent in seats he won’t win at the upcoming election.

With his personal standing having taken a battering over the past two years, the Prime Minister has made the strategic decision revisit his pitch ahead of the election that he is a politician of conviction who will govern to bring Australians together.

He didn’t even pretend he had a chance of winning the ­ seat of Wide Bay, the first stop of his week-long practice campaign during which he unveiled $7.2bn in funding to ­upgrade the notorious Bruce Highway.

“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’,” Mr Albanese said in ­Gympie on Monday.

“That’s because I’m determined to represent all Australians, regardless of where they live. To do the right thing in the national interest. And that’s something that drives my ­government.”

Mr Albanese spent the afternoon visiting an urgent-care clinic his government established in Rockhampton, a regional town in the coal-rich seat of Capricornia that even the most optimistic Labor figures concede is out of reach.

Despite his outward benevolence, this is politics as usual. Just watch how many times Mr Albanese compares his cooperative nature with Peter Dutton’s negativity and divisiveness.

The Prime Minister is using this week as practice for a ruthless campaign aimed at discrediting the Opposition Leader and telling voters Labor is more ­concerned about their bread-and-butter issues, with infrastructure and housing the key policy focuses.

He remained coy in the timing of an election, due by May, but declared he would not be calling one this weekend and signalled parliament would sit again in February.

The gloves come off on Tuesday, with Mr Albanese visiting the winnable seat of Leichhardt as the government releases ­figures claiming that the ­Coalition’s nuclear energy policy will leave the Queensland economy up to 5 per cent smaller and $873bn worse off by 2050.

Jim Chalmers, a Queenslander, used the figures from a government analysis of the Coalition’s modelling, to declare he wouldn’t “sit back and watch Peter Dutton push energy prices up and growth down right across the state”.

“Peter Dutton is the biggest risk to household budgets and Australia’s economy because he wants to push up power prices, slow growth and come after wages and Medicare,” the Treasurer said.

Labor figures are talking up the party’s chances of winning the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt, which takes in Cairns, Cooktown, the Torres Strait Islands and parts of the Great Barrier Reef. The electorate is less dependent on coal than other parts of regional Queensland and Labor sees an opening through the retirement of long-serving Liberal National Party member Warren Entsch.

Mr Albanese will on Tuesday unveil $50m in funding for infrastructure and social housing projects while visiting Cairns. This includes funding for a PCYC, a multicultural centre, a sporting centre and community hubs for Indigenous people. “These projects mean more houses for more Cairns locals and better community facilities to bring them together,” Mr Albanese said.

“We want to see more social housing and more quality community led infrastructure where people need it most.”

On Wednesday, Mr Albanese will visit a cattle station in the Northern Territory seat of Lingiari before spending Thursday and Friday in Western Australia, including in the safe Liberal seat of Durack.

Queensland has been Labor’s problem state since the party’s primary vote crashed in the wake of Kevin Rudd being replaced as prime minister by Julia Gillard in June 2010.

At the 2007 election, Labor won 1.02 million primary votes in Queensland, or 42.9 per cent of all formal votes cast, and claimed 15 of the 29 seats.

Three years later, with the Victorian Ms Gillard having usurped Queenslander Mr Rudd, Labor won only 800,712 voters, or 33.58 per cent. In the four elections since then, Labor’s primary vote in the state has languished in a range from 26.7 per cent to 30.9 per cent.

When the Albanese government was elected in 2022, Labor only marginally increased its primary vote in Queensland to 27.42 per cent, claiming 811,069 primary votes, or more than 200,000 fewer than Rudd Labor won 15 years earlier with a smaller population. Labor now holds only five of the state’s 30 seats after losing inner-city Griffith to the Greens at the last election.

Had there been the same number of voters at the 2007 election as there were in 2022 — and assuming Labor’s 2007 vote percentage would have been the same — Labor has lost the support of almost half a million voters in Queensland since Kevin Rudd came to power.

Despite Labor going backwards on Queensland seats in 2022, Mr Albanese defended his record in winning over voters in the state.

“Our vote went forward in Queensland across just about every seat in this entire state at the 2022 election compared with where we were at in 2019,” he said.