Road maintenance
Ms RYAN (Euroa) (13:57): I rise today to call out the appalling mismanagement of Victoria’s road network. Last year Labor cut funding for road maintenance by 23 per cent, ripping $191 million from the budget. Instead of restoring that today, the government has doubled down on those cuts, cutting even more funding from the state’s crumbling roads. Labor has been in power in this state now for eight years, and Victoria’s roads have never been so bad. Government MPs are so out of touch with reality that they think the concerns of Victorian motorists are ‘imagined fantasies’, in the words of the member for Eltham. In 2017 the Auditor-General warned the government that:
The increasing proportion of the state road network in very poor condition presents a growing risk to public safety and increases road user costs.
Not enough funding is allocated to road maintenance to sustain the road network …