Federal budget 2025: Construction costs to rise ahead of 2032 Olympics

Construction costs are expected to rise in South East Queensland just as the state readies to put shovels in the ground for the 2032 Games.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (left) and Treasurer Jim Chalmers in Brisbane during Tropical Cyclone Alfred

The cost of hiring a tradie and construction is expected to rise in South East Queensland just as the state readies to put shovels in the ground for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

And the effects of Tropical Cyclone Alfred will hit taxpayers across the country, with Treasurer Jim Chalmers setting aside $1.2bn to deal with the disaster clean-up.

The natural disaster will also knock a quarter of a per cent off economic growth worth $1.65bn this financial year.

But the rebuilding effort will also cause demand for tradies and materials to spike.

This will then add to price pressures, particularly in the southeast, where the construction sector is struggling to find “suitable labour to meet elevated levels of demand”.

It comes at a time when the state government, which unveiled its ambitious Games master plan hours before the budget was handed down on Tuesday, will be pushing to get construction of the venues under way.

Queensland’s infrastructure centrepiece in the federal government’s election-eve budget was a recently announced $7.2bn landmark upgrade package for the Bruce Highway.

Also listed was $3.4bn for the 2032 Games, a figure that the federal government has been adamant would not budge despite an overhaul of the venues master plan.

Delays in getting started on the Games venues has pushed back the federal government’s spending, with budget papers showing just $1.2bn, a third of the $3.4bn package, will be spent by mid-2028.

This is about $400m less than what was meant to be spent over the same time frame, according to last year’s budget, in a sign the federal government expects a big chunk of construction for the Games to happen as the 2032 deadline looms.

Federal budget papers also revealed PsiQuantum, a US-based tech start-up angling to build a quantum supercomputer in Brisbane, will have used nearly $200m of a $470m federal loan by the end of June.

As foreshadowed, Queensland will take a $2.9bn hit to its share of GST compared in the coming financial year compared to what was previously forecast.

The state has taken the GST hit after coal royalty rivers of gold gave Queensland government coffers a $25bn sugar hit in the two years to July 2024.

The latest Treasury forecasts also show Queensland could stand to be $8.4bn worse off by mid-2028 on GST takings compared to estimates in last year’s budget papers over the same time frame.

Treasury forecasts show that Queensland will continue to be the destination of choice for people moving within Australia.

Originally published as Federal budget 2025: Construction costs to rise ahead of 2032 Olympics