Tuesday, 18 March 2025

Princes Highway West

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:15): (1069) My adjournment debate this evening is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I seek is the immediate repair and resurfacing of the Princes Highway West from Geelong to Colac. This road has not even been officially opened, and the surface is completely and utterly undrivable. It is an absolute outrage and an insult to regional Victorians to think that a road that is so new, is dual and has been long fought for by the community has kilometre after kilometre down to 80 kilometres an hour. There are temporary road repair signs that may as well be permanent. They may as well change them from the yellow portable sign to the permanently fixed green advisory signs that we see on our highways, advising of the crater-sized holes, divots and deviations right throughout the road surface. It is appalling that such an important asset that brings food, that brings milk and that brings produce from western Victoria to Melbourne and to the city, along with just the sheer safety element, puts people’s lives at risk with road surfacing that is so bad that people are finding that they have to drive only in the right-hand lane because the left-hand lane is so undrivable for kilometre after kilometre. This is just the result of a government and a state that no longer has the capacity to look after basic infrastructure.

I further remind the minister that they promised late last year the biggest road repair maintenance blitz in the history of the world, I think we were told. Can I remind the minister that we are nearly in April, which means there are approximately two months left of workable road repair weather, and I have not seen one piece of roadwork anywhere in the electorate of Polwarth for this summer season of alleged road repair. Can I remind the minister that if you cannot get a major highway done at this time of year that has had temporary signage up for nearly two years in many parts, then the taxpayer and the people of Polwarth can have no faith that this government is serious about maintaining high-quality, safe roads for people to drive on.

In recent weeks we have had the Port Fairy Folk Festival, and we have had the summer season along the Great Ocean Road. There have been millions of visitors down this road. It is just a disgrace that what we are dishing up in a First World country is a road that is simply not fit for purpose. It cannot stay at 80 kilometres an hour. It cannot stay with temporary signs warning of crater-sized holes from one end of it to the other. It needs to be fixed. Minister, I call on you: the action is to please fix this road surface.