Wednesday, 31 May 2023

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2023–24

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:14): I rise to speak on the state budget 2023–24, particularly on the roads funding in the budget, which has been absolutely slashed. We have a crisis with roads here in Victoria, and this has been building ever since Labor came into government and they started slashing funding for roads, starting with the country roads and bridges program that was so popular amongst our small regional councils. Whether it is potholes on freeways, broken rims or crumbling shoulders of our roads, our roads are an absolute mess, and they are unsafe. Mrs Tyrrell borrowed my line this morning that our cars have to be roadworthy, but our roads are not roadworthy, and they certainly are not roadworthy under this government. To quote Mr McCracken, ‘We do not drive on the left-hand side of the road in the country, we drive on what is left of the road,’ because there is not much of the roads left to drive on.

Labor is punishing Victorians by cutting the road budget yet again. We have already seen how unsafe our roads are in Victoria. To date we have had 134 deaths on the roads in Victoria. This is compared to 97 at this date last year. That is an increase of 37 people who are not going home to their families tonight. That is a disgrace. It is an increase of 38.1 per cent on the deaths last year. This government should hang its head in shame.

Mr Berger tried to tell us that the government were doing a great job on roads. He obviously has not driven on a country road in a long, long time. He was telling us that this morning. But in this year’s budget in particular the government have slashed road funding to just $441 million. That is a 25 per cent slash on last year’s budget and a 45 per cent slash since 2020. Our roads are a disgrace, yet this government is cutting funding out of the budget. They brag about an extra – what is it – $1.2 billion or $2.8 billion going in over the next 10 years. It is not nearly enough. The Liberal Party went to the election promising $10 billion over 10 years for road funding, and that is what is needed to fix the crisis that we have here in Victoria today.

While there are many factors that contribute to the road toll, too many Victorian roads are plagued with crumbling shoulders and massive potholes. We see these right throughout country Victoria. Our roads were bad before the floods, but this government likes to say they are only bad because of the floods. I can tell you, I drive on roads in western Victoria in areas that were not flooded that are shocking. I have driven on roads in northern Victoria in areas that were not flooded that are shocking. Of course the floods did add to some of that and made those crumbling roads even worse, but that was because the fabric of the road had been compromised before the floods came, which meant that when the floods came it compounded them even further and made those roads unsafe for country drivers.

It might be all right for the Labor members who represent metropolitan areas to stand up and say, ‘Our roads are fine.’ They probably are fine inside the tram tracks, to quote Mrs McArthur, but outside the tram tracks our roads are not fine. They are not safe. Driving up to Bendigo the other day I saw massive sections of the Calder Highway just blocked off because you could see the potholes, the uneven surfaces. Everywhere we go in country Victoria there are signs that say, ‘Uneven surface ahead’. There are signs that are reducing our speed limits. Reducing the speed limits is not an answer to road maintenance. We need genuine investment in our roads, and this government is not giving us that genuine investment.

I have seen crews out fixing potholes in pouring rain, just pouring a bit of hot mix into it. As soon as a car comes along it pushes it out of it. Our roads have these waves in them where they have put in inferior hot mix to fix the road and it has just stretched when the trucks drive on it, which makes it really unsafe, because it pushes cars all over the road. Mrs Tyrrell talked about driving on our roads being like driving in an earthquake, and she is absolutely right, because you never know where you are going to be pushed next by one of these waves in the road or by a pothole. My office is inundated with people complaining about damage to their cars because of this government’s failure to maintain our roads.