Tim Nicholls has admitted the Queensland opposition's election campaign has been hamstrung by the cost and availability of charter planes.
Yet to hit the state's regions, where Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is spending the opening week of the campaign, Mr Nicholls has been disadvantaged by an inability to take flight.
The opposition leader has spent the first three days of the campaign in the state's southeast, while Ms Palaszczuk flew to north Queensland just hours after calling the November 25 poll on Sunday.
Key battlegrounds have shaped up in seats around Townsville and Cairns, where regional voters are struggling amid a lack of jobs and high power prices.
Mr Nicholls said budget restrictions and a lack of available planes were also to blame for hampering his efforts to pitch to regional voters.
"It's extraordinarily difficult for us to be getting planes at the moment because of the shortness of the time within which the election has been called," the LNP leader told reporters on Tuesday.
He is expected to remain in the state's south on Wednesday before going north later in the week.
Mr Nicholls has so far visited One Nation heartland west of Brisbane and marginal Brisbane and Gold Coast seats to promote a payroll tax cut policy he hopes will stimulate jobs.
The opposition's annual travel budget is independently set by the Department of the Premier and Cabinet's ministerial services branch, taking into account current travel costs.
The amount differs for each party, with both sides having additional campaign funds and the government having access to its own plane.
Ms Palaszczuk, meanwhile, had little sympathy.
"Thats a matter for him, but you know, if you don't understand regional Queensland, you don't understand Queensland," she said.
Mr Nicholls has pledged to lift the payroll tax threshold by $25,000 a year over the next decade and address the state's debt of $72 billion.
