Wednesday, 28 August 2024

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (10:13): I rise to make a contribution on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report on the 2023–24 budget estimates, in particular chapter 6, about the Department of Transport and Planning; more specifically section 6.6, which refers to roads and road safety, the key issues; and even more specifically, the road maintenance and repairs package on page ‍97. It is no secret that in the state of Victoria our roads are well and truly stuffed – in regional Victoria and metro alike. I have raised these issues time and time again, and we seem to have little action in this area.

On the weekend I was on the Heidelberg-Kinglake Road, driving between Kinglake and St Andrews. The Kinglake end has some enormous potholes opening up. What is happening now is that the locals are taking to circling those with different coloured paints and actually writing a number of expletives beside them to warn motorists about how bad they are. There were so many potholes there that I was quite taken aback. Further down between Panton Hill and St Andrews there are a whole lot more potholes. I have mentioned Eltham-Yarra Glen Road recently, which has had a little bit of patchwork but no significant work done on it.

I have three particular areas at the moment that are causing local residents grief. On the Goulburn Valley Highway between Homewood and Kerrisdale near the Dairy Creek Road, the guardrail on the Dairy Creek bridge has suffered damage. There is a traffic light that restricts movement to one lane in each direction. The locals want to know: what is the plan to fix this? What is the timeframe to fix this? How long is that traffic light going to be in place? It is a fairly busy commuter road, that highway, and people have to suffer this every single day.

Equally, on the Goulburn Valley Highway at Thornton, over the Goulburn River, the bridge and road are both damaged. There have been numerous complaints about tyres blowing out, and you can imagine when a lot of people are having their tyres blow out they get pretty agitated and want to see it fixed. They talk to the council and talk to me. It becomes very dangerous for the people that have suffered the tyres blowing out and the road conditions, and there is debris everywhere. Some of it is from the rains – it is at river level. Again, the people between Eildon and Thornton want to know what the plan is to fix this section of road and the bridge. How long is it going to be before that happens?

Further north, at the Mansfield-Woods Point Road between Mansfield and Jamieson we have had a complete failure of the road surface. There has been a traffic light with one lane in each direction in place for 12 months. It is quite extraordinary to have it for 12 months. The cost of hiring that light must surely exceed the cost of actually repairing the road. There have been a number of complaints to me and to the shire about near misses in that area, and in fact very recently there was a near miss with a bus and another vehicle. This could have been quite catastrophic. This section of road has gone from one lane being closed to both lanes being open, but as described to me by local Craig, it is now very much choose your own adventure. The road surface is so badly damaged and with the potholes it is very difficult, so as you go through that and it is your turn at the traffic light, you have got to decide which path you are going to navigate, and you do that yourself. It has been 12 months, and the people who use the Mansfield-Woods Point Road, particularly the residents of Jamieson and Kevington, who go down there daily to Gaffneys Creek and Woods Point, want to know how much longer they are going to have to suffer with this traffic light and one lane of traffic. I think it is about 10 kilometres from the main Mount Buller Road.

These are examples of where the government clearly does not have enough money to do some basic road repairs, and residents in the country are absolutely fed up. They are fed up with the cost blowouts on major projects in Victoria – billions and billions of dollars – but bridges cannot be repaired and dangerous sections of road cannot be repaired. It is just not good enough.

We have the Whittlesea-Yea Road that is in need of work and again the Melba Highway, which I have talked about many, many times. It has had patch jobs. It has had some little bits. It is opening up again because not enough money is allocated to fixing it. There is another section of road at Cathkin on the Maroondah Highway link where the road surface is completely crumbled and failing, and I see very little sign of work being done there. This is just not good enough by the Labor government.