Labor banking on Anthony Albanese’s battleground blitz to swing voting momentum

Senior Labor figures are banking on Anthony Albanese’s pre-election blitz of Queensland to build momentum in the battleground state.

Anthony Albanese was on a Noosa road beside the Bruce Highway to make a $7.2bn pledge to upgrade the highway, which stretches through key regional electorates from Brisbane to Cairns. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Senior Labor figures are banking on Anthony Albanese’s pre-poll blitz of Queensland to build momentum in the battleground state after the party was obliterated in the regions at the October state election.

Launching his mini-campaign with a $7.2bn pledge to upgrade the Bruce Highway, which stretches through key regional electorates from Brisbane to Cairns, the Prime Minister will be hoping to make up crucial ground in Queensland, where federal Labor holds just five of 30 seats.

Several Labor sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believe the party has a slim chance of making significant gains in Peter Dutton’s home state, with the latest Newspoll pegging the ALP’s primary support in Queensland at 29 per cent.

The far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt is considered by party insiders as the “most viable” potential gain, given the retirement of veteran Liberal MP Warren Entsch and the fact state Labor managed to hold the city at Queensland’s October election.

Former professional basketballer turned union organiser Matt Smith has been preselected to run for Labor in the Cairns-based seat and will face off against the LNP’s Jeremy Neal, a former city councillor.

Labor is also optimistic about the prospect of unseating high-profile Greens MP Max ­Chandler-Mather and regaining the inner-south Brisbane seat of Griffith.

ALP sources believe there is a “zero chance” of reclaiming the central Queensland seat of Capricornia, which Nationals MP Michelle Landry won in 2013 and holds on a 6.6 per cent margin.

At the Queensland state election, Labor lost its century-long grip on Rockhampton in a 14.1 per cent swing.

One senior Labor figure said: “(Matt) Canavan and (Michelle) Landry have done a good job hounding us out of central Queensland.”.

Mr Albanese visited the Rockhampton-based seat on Monday afternoon to spruik Labor’s urgent care clinics and Bruce Highway upgrades.

Mr Albanese at the Rockhampton Medicare Urgent Care Clinic on Monday with Labor's candidate for Capricornia, Emily Mawson, right. Picture: PMO

State Labor Treasury spokeswoman Shannon Fentiman said the party had “a lot of work to do to rebuild trust” in central Queensland.

“Making sure that you have good relationships with regional Queensland, that you are there on the ground, listening to their concerns and responding to their challenges, is exactly what the federal Labor government needs to do, and it’s what they’re doing,” she said.

Mr Albanese ran a similar January tour through regional Queensland ahead of the 2022 election, and retiring federal Labor MP Graham Perrett said this trip would be a good opportunity for the first-term Prime Minister to sharpen his election pitch to regional voters. Mr ­Perrett, who won his south Brisbane seat of Moreton in the 2007 “Ruddslide”, believes the government needs to ramp up its promotion of previous cost-of-living handouts.

“I would suggest we are only just getting around to getting that message out, we’ve been so focused on delivering that we haven’t been as good on the retail side,” he told The Australian.

“I’ll be pretty blunt here: Albo doesn’t naturally do that, he is more of a doer than a talker about what he has done.

“Come the election, people will focus on that a lot more and it is the time to go through and detail what has been achieved under the Albanese government and compare and contrast what was going on under that Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison conga line of prime ministers.”

The $7.2bn Bruce Highway pledge and Mr Albanese’s “obsession with roads and railways” will play well in the regions, Mr Perrett believes. “It’s a tough state to win for Labor, always has been (but) I’m optimistic Queensland is ready to give the Albanese government a closer look.”

Labor’s primary vote in the state shrivelled to 26.68 per cent after its disastrous 2019 campaign and lifted slightly to 27.42 per cent at the 2022 election.