Election 2025: Agriculture and regional Australia policies from Labor, Coalition, Greens

Here’s your one-stop shop for all the policies and promises the major parties are making for regional Australians.

With Prime Minister Anthony Albanese firing the starting pistol on a five-week election campaign, The Weekly Times has you covered with all the policies and promises the major parties are making for regional Australians.

Read what each party is proposing to help you inform your vote on May 3.

Return back here to see the latest announcements as they come in over the five-week campaign.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will crisscross the country over the coming five weeks. (Photo by TRACEY NEARMY / AFP)

LABOR

– $10m to establish a new weather radar in regional Queensland (bipartisan support)

– $95m assistance package for the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme (TFES)

– National Food Strategy and Food Council, including looking at biofuels strategy

– Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation legislation in late 2025 to expand the universal service framework to include mobile coverage

– Provide additional $150 in energy bill relief for every Australian household (announced in budget)

– $20m to support Australian producers through the Buy Australian campaign (announced in budget)

– $23.8m to sponsor agricultural trade events, with the majority going to Beef Australia

– $130m for Rex Airlines, comprising $50m on covering debt owed to Rex’s largest creditor, as well as $80m loan facility to the airline administrators (announced in budget)

– $1.1bn for the Western Highway, $100m of which was singled out to upgrade the Brewery Tap Road intersection near Ballarat (announced in budget)

– $7.2bn for upgrades on the Bruce Highway in Queensland (announced in budget)

– Legislation to ban supermarkets from price gouging, with a new taskforce to determine what unfair pricing practices are

– Extend the instant asset write-off of $20,000 for another year

– $2.5m over three years for Farmsafe Australia

COALITION

– $20bn Regional Australia Future Fund

– $1bn for regional roads and infrastructure

– $100m towards upgrading regional medical training facilities and 200 additional regional medical Commonwealth supported places

– $100m to establish a new Raising the Regions Program to deliver choice in child care for regional families

– $10m to establish a new weather radar in regional Queensland (bipartisan support)

– Increase the instant asset write-off to $30k and enshrine it in legislation

– Repeal the live sheep export phase out

– Scrap scope 3 emissions reporting from climate-related financial disclosure obligations

– Promised to cut public service jobs by 41,000 (later clarified through natural attrition)

– Bring back the Agricultural Visa for temporary workers

– Introduce an import container levy to lock in biosecurity funding

– Stop planned changes to superannuation where assets over $3m are taxed

– Safeguard the 88-day rule for backpackers

– Cut the fuel excise by 25c for a year

– No more water purchases in the Murray Darling Basin

– Repeal critical minerals legislation

– Provide certainty to Tasmania’s salmon industry

– Establish new “Permanent Timber Production Zones” to support ongoing access to native and plantation timber

– Review Chilean salmon import requirements into Australia

– End taxpayer funding to discredited environmental groups (such as the Environmental Defenders Office)

– Scrap offshore wind zones in Bunbury, Hunter, Illawarra and Southern Ocean in Victoria

– $40m in matched grants to establish a new Timber Manufacturing Expansion Program for eligible timber mills to increase timber production capacity

– Crack down on illegal foreign fishing vessels

– Introduce country-of-origin labelling for wood

– $2m to assist businesses to implement new country of origin labelling laws

– $64.5m to Disaster Relief Australia

– $12m for Mildura Airport runway upgrade

– Re-establish the Building Better Regions Fund – axed in 2022 – with an initial $250m in 2025-26

– End the $19.5bn Rewiring the Nation (renewable energy focused) Fund, promising no additional transmission lines would be built, instead favouring nuclear, gas and coal-fired energy projects. Existing contracts already signed would however be honoured

– Establish a $100m Raising the Regions program to deliver flexible and innovative approaches to early childhood education and care in “child car deserts” where there is limited or no supply

– Develop a comprehensive National Food Security Plan, with an interim report due within the first six months of government

– $2.5m over three years for Farmsafe Australia

Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: Martin Ollman

GREENS

– Establish Green Agriculture Australia, a $250m R & D centre to drive sustainable farming

– End fossil fuel subsidies for all industries except agriculture

– $100m investment to advance the development of alternative proteins

– $28m over four years to strengthen environmental biosecurity

– $80m in R & D to protect Australia from invasive species

– Subsidise on-farm batteries and renewable energy storage infrastructure with $50m to lower costs and drive adoption

– $75m to support beekeepers impacted by varroa mite

– $50m in R & D for commercial seaweed aquaculture and harvesting in Australia

– $3bn Communications Fund to support regional, rural and remote areas

– End native forest logging

– End the live export trade industry entirely

– End factory farming

– Bring forward ban on caged egg production by 2036