‘Jim has shafted Queensland’: LNP government blasts federal budget

The Queensland government has accused federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers of shafting his home state by pulling out of a major road funding promise and diverting cash from ditched rail projects to prop up costly infrastructure in Victoria.

A more than $800 million injection to fund an upgrade to the Bruce Highway north of Brisbane will be delivered through a 50-50 split with the state government.

The funding arrangement has infuriated the LNP state government who said Queensland was promised ahead of the last federal election that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would restore an agreement to fund 80 per cent of upgrades to the highway that runs from Brisbane to Cairns.

Chalmers described the complaint over the agreement as “total rubbish”.

“We did an 80-20 deal on the $7.2 billion contribution we made to the Bruce,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

“Subsequent to that, we made an additional announcement which they understood to be 50-50. That was communicated to them.

“So it’s not true.”

The state’s transport and main roads minister, Brent Mickelberg, also claimed cash was diverted to tipping in an additional $3.8 billion for a rail project in Melbourne by ditching the extension of In Land rail to Queensland and not funding the second stage of rail linking Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast.

“Shifty Jim has shafted Queensland,” Mickelberg told reporters on Wednesday morning.

“We’ve seen a reallocation of funding and priority from Queensland to prop up a failing Victorian government on the suburban rail loop.

“We’ve seen projects like the Wave on the Sunshine Coast ignored … a project which was identified by the federal government’s own infrastructure body as a national priority, has no funding allocated in the federal budget.”

But Chalmers also dismissed this, saying Queensland was “actually getting more funding in the infrastructure investment program than any other state or territory”. On a per-person basis, the sunshine state is receiving significantly more for roads than NSW and Victoria.

Over the forward estimates to mid-2030, Queensland will get $13.5 billion, about $2272 per person, while NSW and Victoria will receive $10.8 billion and $8.27 billion – about $1217 and $1127 each resident respectively.

Budget papers released on Tuesday night unveiled a daring overhaul of property tax to slug investors and help more first homebuyers enter the market – a move likely to be felt most acutely by Queenslanders.

In what Chalmers described as the “most important and ambitious budget in decades”, negative gearing will be limited to new builds and the capital gains tax concession reduced.

The tax changes will allow 75,000 more Australians to become homeowners in the next decade, according to treasury modelling included in budget papers announced on Tuesday night.

Although the forecast analysis doesn’t include a state-by-state breakdown, it was expected to offer relief to Queensland where experts say the housing affordability crisis is most severe after persistent interstate migration drove property prices higher.

“We’re delivering a fairer tax system for workers, first home buyers and future generations,” Chalmers said in his speech to parliament on Tuesday night.

“This will help rebalance a system which is more generous to assets than it is to labour. And help rebalance a system where house prices have decoupled from incomes.

“Since 1999, house prices have risen over 400 per cent, more than twice as fast as average incomes.”

The current 50 per cent capital gains tax discount will be replaced next year with inflation-adjusted indexation featuring a new minimum 30 per cent tax rate on capital gains.

The overhaul will be felt at the top end of the Queensland market where new investor loans have significantly outpaced first home buyer loans, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The measure was intended to rein in price growth, which has routinely recorded annual double-digit jumps in Queensland, and comes as treasury expects the flow of interstate migrants to continue with more than 75,000 arrivals by mid-2030.

By June 30, 14,900 people are expected to have moved to Queensland from other states as 21,400 leave NSW. Treasury predicts this wave of interstate migrants to then jump to 17,300 by the middle of 2027, and gradually rise to 19,500 across the forward estimates.

By comparison, NSW will lose between 20,500 and 21,400 each year by 2030 while Victoria will add between 3000 and 3300 a year.

Queensland’s total population will grow from 5.7 million at the end of 2025 to 5.9 million by the end of 2027 and 6.1 million by the end of 2030.

And while new arrivals crunch the housing market, older Queenslanders have clogged the state’s hospitals and heaped pressure on the health system due to a lack of space at aged care facilities.

Chalmers says the $3.7 billion allocated in the budget for aged care will create 5000 more beds each year through to 2030, although the modelling also doesn’t include a state-by-state breakdown.

Get across all our coverage

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• Tax changes: Negative gearing, CGT, family trusts and how this will affect the property market
• Generational divide: Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, this is what the budget means for you
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