Wednesday, 7 February 2024

Rural and regional roads

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:31): I rise today to grieve on behalf of the people of Victoria and particularly motorists in the state of Victoria, who are putting up with what would have to be described as the most disgraceful roads in our country.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Before the member for Gippsland South continues, the member for Euroa, the member for Narracan, the member for Morwell and the member for Mildura are not in their allocated seats, and I would ask them to cease interjecting.

Danny O’BRIEN: This is a conspiracy to take away the cheer squad from behind me!

The member for Sunbury knows this is going to get a bit more interesting, because the member for Sunbury was talking about how this government is investing in infrastructure right across the state. Well, the one thing that they are not investing in is the most simple and most basic thing, and that is a road network that can be driven on by the people of Victoria without breaking an axle, without damaging a tyre, without cracking a rim, because that is what we are seeing under this government with the cuts that have been implemented by this government, and from day one. From day one, the very first budget – the 2015–16 budget brought down by the then Andrews Labor government – cut the roads maintenance budget by 10 per cent and axed the country roads and bridges program that had been so successful under the previous government in actually helping local councils to build their roads and bridges. But it is now gone altogether, as with the state of our roads, the VicRoads roads that are managed by the state of Victoria.

We have seen, according to the government’s own budget papers, a 45 per cent reduction in the road maintenance budget since 2020. That includes a 25 per cent cut to the road maintenance budget this year, in the 2023–24 budget. It is there in budget paper 3, page 310. Literally there are the brackets – a 25 per cent reduction. That brings the total spend this year down to $441 million on road maintenance. That is less than what was spent by the former coalition government 10 years ago. Ten years ago the former coalition government was spending more than this government is now on road asset maintenance. I will jump in, because there might be someone who is paying attention on that side who will say, ‘No, no, no. You’ve got to read the footnote on that budget paper page 310, which says we are in fact spending $770 million.’ I asked the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, who happens to be at the table, in a question on notice, ‘Could you tell me where you got that $770 million figure from?’ I said, ‘Give me a breakdown,’ because the budget papers say $441 million, and the answer I got was:

The total road asset management expenditure is calculated from the forecast road asset management output cost as shown in Budget Paper 3, plus the forecast expenditure on relevant asset initiatives as shown in Budget Paper 4.

In other words, ‘It’s in there somewhere. We can make it add up. Just trust us that it’s actually that much.’ In the answer from the minister she still could not even actually give me an answer to where the breakdown is. But then there is one more line that says:

This also includes funding from previous budgets.

The government is trying to claim money in this year’s budget that it obviously did not spend in the past, and what we are seeing is an outcome that has absolutely devastated our roads right across the state. If you go from the Western District to the north-east, from Gippsland to the Wimmera and the Mallee and right across even metropolitan Victoria, you will see the absolute carnage that is being caused on our roads because of the reduction in maintenance spending by this government. That is one of the telling things about the reduction in road maintenance spending. Those of us in regional Victoria are sort of, sadly, quite used to it because under this government in particular our needs are always placed second, third, fourth, fifth, but what has been happening, particularly in the past 18 months in my experience, is it is impacting on roads in the metropolitan area. Whether it is the Hume Freeway, the Western Highway coming into and out of Melbourne, the Frankston Freeway – we had a situation last year where 25 cars in one night popped tyres on the Frankston Freeway because of a pothole that had been left to develop there – it is happening right across the state.

We are seeing everywhere the poor state of the roads and the fact that the government is, instead of fixing those roads – because poor old VicRoads does not have any money to do so – instituting what they call road pavement management plans.

Martin Cameron interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: ‘What’s that?’ I hear the member for Morwell ask. What does that entail? You know what it is, you just have not seen the title. You have seen it everywhere.

The SPEAKER: Through the Chair, member for Gippsland South.

Danny O’BRIEN: Speaker, you have seen it too, I am sure. I was in Bendigo last week, and I am sure the Speaker has seen it too. What it entails is speed reductions – signs that say ‘Rough surface ahead’, ’60 kilometres an hour’, ’80 kilometres an hour’ – and this is happening everywhere. The member for Euroa highlighted it is happening everywhere. Data provided to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee shows that at 30 October last year there were more than 540 of these zones around the state where the speed limit had been reduced not because of a danger, not because of a bend, not because of something physical that could not be addressed but because the road surface itself was so poor. That is an indictment on this government.

I have seen this firsthand in my own electorate. The South Gippsland Highway, which runs from Cranbourne through to Sale – if you go from Korumburra to Foster –

John Pesutto interjected.

Danny O’BRIEN: They are beautiful places, Leader of the Opposition. If you take out the towns, where clearly the speed limit will go up and down, the speed limit goes from 100 kilometres an hour down to 80, back up to 100, back down to 80, back up to 100, then to 60. Then there is another 100 and then there is another 60 before it goes back to 100 kilometres an hour. That is just between Korumburra and Foster. The road surface is so bad that the government has had to reduce the speed limit in those locations.

Of two of those between Stony Creek and Foster, one is rutting, potholes, the surface is bad and the other one is where the road has become so polished, because the government has not been spending money on resurfacing programs – it is going up a hill – that trucks cannot get traction on that section of road. I know that a very prominent local milk factory has directly contacted VicRoads and has raised its concerns about the safety of that bit of road, and I wrote to the minister about that way back in the middle of last year. To this day all that has happened there is that there have been speed reduction signs. I understand that in the last couple of days – I have not been there of course; I have been here in Parliament – almost all the 60-kilometre-an-hour signs have been vandalised by frustrated motorists who are sick to death of the government putting up speed reduction signs instead of fixing the roads.

On Rosedale-Longford Road, same thing – it is such a poor piece of pavement that the government in what should be a 100-kilometre-an-hour zone has put up a 60-kilometre-an-hour area. It had lights installed there for some preparatory works the other day so that on the Australia Day long weekend people were taking half an hour to get through the blockage. That is not on the road to Torquay or to Phillip Island, that is on Rosedale-Longford Road. They are down to beautiful places, no doubt, though ‍– Longford and Loch Sport, Seaspray, along the Ninety Mile Beach – but there were 45-minute waits for Australia Day because the roads are so bad that people have got to wait for the traffic lights.

I might just quickly add too the other one dear to my heart, on the Hyland Highway at Carrajung Lower, where a small dip in the road was first reported to VicRoads in April last year. A patch-up job was done. It was not fixed properly – a patch-up job was done. Now, everyone in regional Victoria will know about ski jumps, and that is what this one became known as very quickly by the locals because there was a big dip and a big pile of asphalt on the other side with a great speed hump. Then guess what happened: it got worse. At the start of December it slipped entirely, so that one side of the road has now been closed, and in the ensuing month that entire side of the road slipped away. It is a genuine landslip, and it would be 3 metres high. It is well over my head. So the Hyland Highway, servicing a district of about 6000 people between Traralgon and Yarram, is now down to one lane and has been since the start of December. I am told we are going to be waiting at least another month before anything will be done to actually fix that landslip. On an issue that developed in April last year and was patched and not fixed properly, as a result we have got the highway down to one lane.

I mentioned the performance of VicRoads. We have seen some of the data come out in recent months. In the annual report the government fell 25 per cent short of its targets for road repairs in regional Victoria. In a Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearing in November we got the updated figures, and in fact it was 30 per cent across the state. The government had missed its targets for fixing roads by 30 per cent, and one of the reasons given for that when PAEC asked the department was, ‘The lower area of road treated in 2022–23 was due to increased costs arising from market price escalation and inflation.’

Well, we have got $38.8 billion of costs and market escalation that the government has spent and put on the tab for all Victorians for the future, adding to the $177.8 billion of debt this state has. It is different if it is a project in the metro area – the Metro Tunnel, the level crossing removals that the member for Sunbury talked about or the North East Link, which is $10 billion over budget, $10 billion over its most recent figure. It is just unconscionable. But the government says when it comes to fixing roads, ‘Oh, sorry, the costs went up a bit, so we didn’t do as much.’ It is just extraordinary that the government has given so little attention to this.

We are seeing that this is not going to get any better. This is not going to get any better because industry has told us – this is the people that do resurfacing every year – that there will be no resurfacing contracts this year, 2023–24. Resurfacing is the important bit, where they spray the tar and they put new rock down every year. It re-creates a seal, making sure the seal is there and that water does not get in and it does not create more potholes, cracking, rutting and all those things. I asked the secretary of the department about it in November, and he confirmed the general rule of thumb is they try and do about 8 per cent of the network a year, which means that the entire network gets resealed about every 10 to 12 years. This year for the first time in more than three decades there will be no resurfacing program, because this government has cut the budget so savagely that it simply does not have the money to do it.

We are seeing this in every way, shape and form impacting on Victorians, and this is ultimately what it is all about. We are seeing people suffer the consequences of poor roads. It is not just discomfort or inconvenience. We have seen, thanks to the member for Euroa, who put these questions on notice, what the number of compensation claims for damage caused by the roads has been. In 2021 it was 298 claims. In 2022–23 it was 1532 claims, a 414 per cent increase in the number of Victorians claiming compensation because of damage to their vehicles caused by Victorian roads. That tells the story very, very strongly. The message I get is people coming to me and saying, ‘Can you lower the threshold?’ There is a threshold of $1580 this year before you can claim anything. I say, ‘Well, I don’t want to lower the threshold. I want the government to fix the roads so your car doesn’t get damaged in the first place.’ But sadly, we are simply not seeing that from the government.

Indeed I was doing a bit of a look around this week and found some work that the government had done. It had engaged the National Transport Research Organisation to do some papers on structural condition assessments, going back to 2021. In 2021, of 8400 kilometres surveyed, 32 per cent was rated ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. After the floods in 2022 – so the 2023 figure – 91 per cent of that part of the road network was rated as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. Virtually the entire road network was rated as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ because the government simply has not put the money in for this.

I have not even had time to talk about the road toll, which sadly increased by 22 per cent last year. At the same time the government cut $230 million from TAC programs, including $150 million from the SSRIP program, the Safe System Road Infrastructure Program. It is just extraordinary that this government has failed so badly. This government has failed dismally to do the basics on the road, due to the fact that Labor cannot manage money. It cannot manage projects, and it is Victorians and motorists in particular that are suffering the consequences. Our cars have to be roadworthy; it is about time the government made sure that our roads were carworthy.