Tuesday, 7 June 2022

Ministers statements: road infrastructure

Mr CARROLL (Niddrie—Minister for Public Transport, Minister for Roads and Road Safety) (14:37): It is my pleasure to rise to update the house on our record investment in road maintenance, which has seen us deliver 1100 projects since September—1500 kilometres of roads in regional and rural Victoria rebuilt and resurfaced under our government. We are also adding some 1800 jobs to the pipeline, many of them local jobs in regional and rural Victoria. But it gets better. On this side of the chamber we are making sure we only renew and rebuild Victorian roads, because we know what happened last time with that website and those roads overseas in Europe and North America that were going to be upgraded. We are only doing roads that live in country—

Mr Edbrooke interjected.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Frankston can leave the chamber for the period of 1 hour.

Member for Frankston withdrew from chamber.

Mr CARROLL: But we are not stopping there. Just in this budget there is $780 million to resurface and rebuild more regional country roads, and some 12 000 kilometres of regional and rural roads have already been rebuilt and resurfaced under our government.

A member interjected.

Mr CARROLL: I will tell you about those, very much so. If I was in the National Party, I would be pretty quiet at the moment, because ‘Click here to vote’. If you have a look at it, ‘Click here to vote. Your votes will be presented to the minister’. Before the last election the National Party were rolling out ‘A website won’t fix country roads’, but now websites do fix country roads.

Ms Staley: On a point of order, Speaker, I note that the minister is attempting to use props, and I ask you to counsel him not to do so. But I would also like him to answer: when he drove home from Ararat, did he drive in all the potholes that have opened up on the road?

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! The minister, when the house comes to order.

Mr CARROLL: I tell you what, our candidate in Ararat is a young superstar that is really getting on with the job. She has got the minister there doing round tables with the regional development minister. We are rebuilding those roads. But it gets great because here it is—you have got to find the authorisation: ‘the National Party, 30 Collins Street, Melbourne’.

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! When the house comes to order. Before members leave the chamber, I just wish to ask ministers assembled in the house to take away a reminder today—some homework. There are outstanding constituency question answers, adjournment items and questions on notice that need to be answered within the time frames set out in the standing orders. I ask ministers to come back to the house with those answers.

Mr Wells: On a point of order, Speaker, just following on from what you have just said in regard to unanswered questions—5885, 6174 and 6334. And, can you believe it, 5885 is almost a year—that was due on 7 July last year and we still do not have an answer. It is regarding visitors to facilities with people with disabilities.

The SPEAKER: Thank you. We will follow those matters up.