Wednesday, 1 May 2024

Department of Treasury and Finance

Budget papers 2023–24

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (16:30): I rise to speak on the state budget 2023–24. Particularly I want to speak about the roads budget, because I am hoping that the government will actually increase the budget for road maintenance in this year’s budget. Last year we saw a 25 per cent cut to the road maintenance budget, which when you add that together with cuts over previous years is a 45 per cent cut since 2020. And where are we? In regional Victoria our roads are an absolute disgrace. The National Transport Research Organisation has said that just 9 per cent of the roads in regional Victoria are in a good or very good condition, and that means that 91 per cent of those roads are in poor condition. We know this is true. We know they are pothole-ridden. We know that there are lives being lost on our roads. Last year 295 lives were lost. That was the highest it has been in 15 years. This year we are fairly on track to match that. Currently it is sitting at 93 lives lost, which is actually down by eight or nine on the previous year, but the problem is in country Victoria. At this time last year there were 58 lives lost and there have been 58 lives lost this year, so the road toll in country Victoria is not decreasing. That is because of a number of things – driver behaviour but also the condition of our roads.

We get constituents in on a daily basis talking about the potholes on our roads. Our roads are falling into a dangerous state of disrepair. The wire rope barriers have been lying on the ground since last year and are not being repaired. We actually had a very tragic incident in Greater Shepparton last week – a single-vehicle accident where a car left the road and hit a tree and the driver was killed. The local paper has reported that the car actually drove over the wire rope barriers, which were lying on the ground. Had those wire rope barriers been repaired they may have made a difference. We cannot be 100 per cent sure, and I am not blaming the government for the death. I am just saying that if we have our roads in better condition and we have the wire rope barriers in better condition, there is a better chance that there will be fewer accidents and fewer deaths on our roads.

Talking about wire rope barriers, I raised the condition of the wire rope barriers on the Midland Highway, the Goulburn Valley Highway and also the Hume Highway in this house in February. I got an answer from the government on 1 March that said that they would be repairing all of those wire rope barriers in March. Well, in the middle of April I went around and had a look at them, and none of them had been repaired. They have still not been repaired. We are now on the first day of May, and the government has still not repaired those wire rope barriers. Unfortunately a life was lost in Greater Shepparton last week because of that.