Wednesday, 13 November 2024

Department of Transport and Planning

Report 2023–24

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:35): I rise to speak on the Department of Transport and Planning’s annual report 2023–24. And surprise, surprise, what will I be talking about in that report? Roads. I think we have seen some articles over the last couple of days that have shown us just how poorly this government is doing on resurfacing and rehabilitation work with roads in this state. In fact this afternoon I had some friends who were driving up to the country who texted me to say how bad the roads were, and my response was, ‘Welcome to the country,’ because that is the state of the roads right across regional Victoria. In fact they suggested that I got a few corflutes and put them up to say the potholes were the project of the Allan Labor government. The trouble is you cannot put them on roads, but I would love to do that because it is true. It is a project of the Allan Labor government because they are deliberately ignoring the needs of country Victorians for the maintenance of our road network.

What we saw in an article over the weekend was that the government have actually slashed the rehabilitation and resurfacing work that has been done by a staggering 95 per cent in regional areas. In 2022–23 the road area treated was close to 9 million square metres, and in the 2023–24 year it was just 422,000 square metres. So we know that the Allan Labor government are ignoring the needs of regional roads. They slashed spending on resurfacing from $201 million to $37 million in that period. And there were delays in rolling out the projects in the 2023–24 year. They only achieved 69 per cent of the program of regional projects finished on time, so these projects are getting fewer and they are taking longer to do.

Recently they made a big splash of packaging up a whole heap of little projects and saying, ‘We’re going to spend $964 million on the resurfacing of roads.’ But it was too little, and it was too late. Many of our roads have been in a disgraceful condition for years. Drivers are reporting damage to their cars, and they are not being compensated for it by this government. In that $964 million, of the 11 districts that are within my region of Northern Victoria there were four that did not get a single project. One of those that did was the Premier’s own electorate of Bendigo East. One of them was the Speaker’s electorate, Bendigo West. Also, in Murray Plains and Eildon there was not a single road in those electorates that was to be upgraded. The Premier’s own electorate of Bendigo East actually has an intersection, the intersection of Howard Street and Midland Highway, that was voted by the RACV the worst intersection in the state, and yet it does not get any funding. The Melba Highway in the seat of Eildon was voted the worst road in Victoria, and yet it is not getting any maintenance or resurfacing done to it this year by the state government under this program. The Melba Highway – the minister actually went out and named that when she announced the project. She said to the cameras, ‘Yes, we’re going to upgrade the Melba Highway,’ but it is not on the list. It was on the list given to the media, but it is not on the official list, and there are other roads that were on the list given to the media but not on the official list.

In my electorate – and my electorate is about 46 per cent of the land mass of Victoria – less than 32 kilometres of road will be treated. In the seat of Shepparton it is 1.4 kilometres. In Yan Yean it is just 290 metres of road. Yan Yean has some of the worst roads – Yan Yean Road, Donnybrook Road – in this state, and just 290 metres is going to be treated. In Benambra it is 1.36 kilometres; Ovens Valley, 1.6 kilometres; Euroa, a little bit better, 8.5; Mildura, 5.1; and Macedon, 13.6. It is not nearly enough for roads in regional Victoria.