Anthony Albanese: PM’s blitz to fire up attack on coalition's nuclear plan continues

Labor will renew its attack on the coalition’s nuclear energy plan as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese kicks on with his blitz of key election battlegrounds.

Mr Albanese is travelling to electorates in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia ahead of the official start of the federal election campaign.

He will begin Tuesday in Rockhampton, on Queensland’s central coast, before heading north to Cairns and west to Mount Isa.

Labor hopes to win the north Queensland seat of Leichhardt, held by retiring Liberal MP Warren Entsch, at the federal election due by late May.

The government has attacked Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s $330 billion bid to set up seven nuclear reactors.

New analysis released by Labor during Mr Albanese’s offensive shows the coalition’s plan assumes the cost to Queensland will be more than $872 billion in lost output by 2050.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Mr Dutton’s “economic madness” would leave the state’s households worse off.

“As a Queenslander, I won’t sit back and watch Peter Dutton push energy prices up and growth down right across the state,” he said.

“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.”

Cost-of-living pressures will be a key issue during the election, as pain felt by households whittles down the government’s approval ratings.

Fresh polling released by Roy Morgan shows if an election was held now, the coalition would win with a two-party preferred vote of 53 per cent to Labor’s 47 per cent.

Primary support for the coalition has dropped slightly to 40.5 per cent while Labor’s primary vote increased to 31 per cent.

Mr Albanese visited Gympie on Monday to announce $7.2 billion in funding to upgrade the 1600km-long Bruce Highway.

The highway, notorious for fatalities and serious crashes, recorded more than 40 deaths in 2024, and another two since the start of the new year on Wednesday.

Mr Albanese said there was nothing “last minute” about the cash splash as polls suggested Labor would have to fight to keep a majority government.

“I’ve never been about allocating infrastructure investment on the basis of what way people vote,” he told 4BC Brisbane on Monday afternoon.

“It’s about the national interest in doing the right thing.”

Federal coalition members said the pledge showed Mr Albanese only cared about Queensland’s regional infrastructure when an election was looming.

Mr Albanese said he wanted Australians to ask themselves who would ensure they were better off in the future.

The visits will coincide with the release of the latest monthly inflation figures on Wednesday, which the Reserve Bank will monitor as it considers an interest rate cut in February.