Election 2025: Queensland Premier David Crisafulli enters campaign, backing Trevor Evans

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has entered the federal political race to endorse the candidate for Brisbane.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

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Queensland Premier David Crisafulli has entered the federal political race as Anthony Albanese launched a full-frontal assault on the state capital.

Voters in the seat of Brisbane have begun to receive letters from Mr Crisafulli in the final week of the campaign, backing Liberal candidate Trevor Evans in the three-way race for the electorate.

The endorsement boasted of Mr Evans’s credentials as an economist and his “impressive track record” as the federal member from 2016 to 2022 before he lost the seat to the Greens’ Stephen Bates at the last federal election.

“He has the skills, experience and passion to deliver for the Brisbane community,” Mr Crisafulli said. “His inclusive style of bringing people together is why he delivered so much when he was your representative.

“In a cost-of-living and housing crisis, we need an economist, not an activist.”

The letter drop comes six months after Mr Crisafulli’s convincing win at the state election on a small-target youth crime and cost-of-living agenda.

It comes as the Prime Minister touched down in Brisbane on Tuesday.

Mr Albanese began with an early morning appearance on commercial radio in the seat of Brisbane before visiting Greens-held Griffith on the opposite side of the city’s namesake river to see an affordable housing development.

Mr Albanese continued on to a pre-poll booth in the seat of Bonner, which Labor hopes to claim from long-term Liberal MP Ross Vasta, who holds it on a margin of 3.41 per cent. He continued on to the neighbouring electorate of Moreton, where the party’s incumbent MP Graham Perrett is retiring, to meet people at a local shopping centre to help shore up the 9.09 per cent margin.

Brisbane Greens MP Stephen Bates alongside Labor candidate Madonna Jarrett and the Liberals’ Trevor Evans. Picture: Annette Dew

The three-way race in Brisbane is expected to come down to preferences, as it did in 2022 when Mr Bates edged ahead of Labor’s Madonna Jarrett to secure the seat despite Mr Evans capturing the higher first-preference vote. Liberal sources believe the seat could be recaptured should one in five Labor voters preference Mr Evans above the Greens.

Mr Bates acknowledged the race would again be tight.

“Voters know the only way to keep Dutton out of Brisbane is to vote Greens,” he said.

Mr Crisafulli is also expected to write similar letters for Liberal candidate Maggie Forrest in the Greens-held suburban Brisbane seat of Ryan and the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt, where sitting member Warren Entsch is retiring.