Wednesday, 5 March 2025

Department of Transport and Planning

Report 2023–24

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:34): I rise to speak on the Department of Transport and Planning’s annual report 2023–24. I actually spoke on this report in the last sitting week. I started out speaking about the number of roads that need to be improved in my area, and I ran out of time. So I am back here again speaking on that report. While there are a lot of roads that need improvements, today I want to focus on three big projects that actually do need to be delivered in Northern Victoria Region. They are all bypasses of major towns.

The first of those is the Shepparton bypass. This is a project that has been in the planning for over three decades. In fact long before I was elected to this Parliament, in the 1990s, I was part of a committee that was advocating for the route of the Shepparton bypass to be decided. The bypass was part of a promise to duplicate the Goulburn Valley Highway, and the highway has been duplicated all the way to Shepparton now, but the stalemate starts at Shepparton, where this government will not commit to the bypass. The Liberal and National parties actually made a commitment at the last election that we would commence this bypass, but we have seen nothing from Labor. We need to remember that Labor have been in power for 22 of the last 26 years in this state, and so all of these projects not being built fall at the feet of Labor. The bypass around Shepparton was to be built as a single-stage construction, but the community realised quite a while ago that governments were not interested because it was a large project. So the community volunteered to stage that project; they did that because it is vital for us to get a second river crossing, which will provide a connection between Shepparton and Mooroopna during times of flood. Our two communities were completely cut off from each other during the floods of 2022. In fact the east and west of the state were cut because the Midland Highway could not connect Shepparton and Mooroopna.

We need to take the trucks out of High Street in Shepparton; at the moment we have B-doubles tearing through the middle of our town. In 2022 when we were standing at polling booths in High Street we saw a number of near misses as trucks locked up their wheels because cars were stopped to park, all because the traffic lights for the walkway across from Target would change. It is only a matter of time before we have a major accident if this bypass is not built, but we see no commitment from this government.

The town of Rutherglen is another town that needs a major bypass, and they have been talking about their bypass for at least 20 years. This is the Murray Valley Highway, running right through Main Street, Rutherglen, which is an 1800s streetscape not built to have large trucks and B-doubles and things running through it. Last year we had three major accidents – tragically a local pedestrian was killed in one, and the other two could have been much worse. But the government needs to commit to that bypass at Rutherglen to make the tourist town of Rutherglen much safer and to provide for safer passage for trucks also as they travel on the Murray Valley Highway.

The last one that I want to mention is the Kilmore-Wallan bypass, and again this is one that has been probably over three decades in the planning. In fact congestion in the main street of Kilmore was talked about in 1938 – they were saying how congested that main street was. The Kennett government first committed to building a bypass of Kilmore and Wallan in 1999, but of course then they did not win the election. The Labor government did, and they did not do anything about it. The Baillieu government committed $130 million to construct that bypass, but again when Labor got back in they scrapped that project. In 2018–19 Labor finally committed $20 million, but I am told that money has not been spent yet, and that was for land acquisition. So this is a project that is desperately needed because the population in this area is set to triple in the next 20 years.