Tuesday, 1 April 2025

South-West Coast electorate projects

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (19:11): (1095) My adjournment is for the Treasurer, and the action I seek is for the Treasurer to commit funding to the crucial projects required in South-West Coast in the upcoming budget. In the upcoming May budget I call on the Allan Labor government to provide funding for the Warrnambool Surf Lifesaving Club. It urgently needs a rebuild. The club provides emergency services to the community. Over the Labour Day long weekend the club hosted the Victorian junior state championships, with over 1000 junior lifesavers competing. During the event the clubhouse lost water and then power. This shows just how desperately a new facility is needed. The Allan Labor government need to fund the rebuild of the surf lifesaving club.

I call on the Allan Labor government to provide funding for the multipurpose indoor sport and recreation facility which is needed in Portland. After years of planning, Glenelg Shire Council and local sporting clubs had scoped it out to cater for a range of sporting and recreational activities, including basketball, table tennis, volleyball, dance and martial arts. The government’s funding announcement in 2022 to support the renovation of the gymnastics club at a different site scuppered plans for a shared multipurpose centre. The government now needs to get the funding underway to support all the clubs and build the multipurpose centre which is planned and scoped for Otway Street.

The Allan Labor government need to provide funding for a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for the south-west. This is the only region in Victoria still waiting. It is needed to provide life-changing support for people in recovery near their families. The business case for this is clear. It is nine years since the Western Region Alcohol and Drug Centre, WRAD, formed the Lookout committee and jumped through every government hoop. They have fulfilled every government request. The government keeps promising but has not delivered. The time for excuses is over. I call on the Allan Labor government to fund the Lookout in the next budget. They have been waiting for years.

I call on the government to provide funding to fix regional and rural roads properly. Patching potholes here and there is not working. We need a concerted, thorough effort to resurface the roads. Currently the road degradation is a massive risk to drivers and standard vehicles as well as trucks. South-west Victorians have had enough. We have had the driest spring, summer and autumn, and the government could have done a ton of work on our roads, but we have not seen the expenditure or the road crews. The budget needs a substantial uplift in roads funding. The government cannot continue to deny that they have significantly cut road funding in the regions. Resurfacing-of-roads spend is down 82 per cent, and 91 per cent of roads are in poor or very poor condition, according to the government’s own survey.