Tuesday, 8 February 2022

Polwarth electorate roads

Mr RIORDAN (Polwarth) (19:19): (6194) My adjournment this evening is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, which is a common one of course for the electorate of Polwarth. The action I seek from the minister is that I am inviting him down to come and see a couple of key roads in my electorate. One is the C151, which is the one I met with a variety of farmers and local community members about, and it is the road that connects Colac with Carlisle.

This road has been problematic for quite some time, and unfortunately this year it has seen already two very serious accidents, one of those being a fatality. It is a busy road. It carries a lot of agricultural freight. It carries tourists, it has bike riders and of course it is the only road in and out of that community for the hardworking farmers and farm workers that live in that region. The problem quite simply with this road, like the roads that connect Colac through to Forrest and roads that connect Cobden through to Warrnambool, is that these are roads that go through very thick bush, particularly the C151 at Carlisle. It goes for quite some distance through thick state forest and Otway National Park country. The problem, and what the minister needs to see, is that for the last two decades there has been no regular maintenance and clearing of the roadside vegetation on that road—so much so that today to drive down that road your side mirrors touch brush. Large truck operators are often reporting having their side mirrors swiped from the vehicles. Tree branches are dangling. A bus driver who brings the kids up from there to school in Colac regularly carries a chainsaw in his truck in order to clear limbs from the road, and there are always tree limbs hanging in the branches ready to fall—ones that have already come adrift and are just hanging there waiting for the wind to make them fall.

The reason, Minister, I want you to come down to see this very poor maintenance—it makes life unsafe for the people in that area—is that, adjacent to that, the forestry roads that go off this road are cleared 6 metres each side of the road. It is exactly what the community want for their main roads. These roads that are being maintained for forestry workers, government employees, have 6-metre clearances and beautiful surfaces. You could literally land a 747—

Mr Fowles: Literally?

Mr RIORDAN: literally—on these roads and yet two large vehicles can barely pass side by side without having their mirrors swiped off on what is the main road. Minister, this is an important issue. It is one that needs to be brought under control and it needs your urgent attention.