Tuesday, 21 February 2023

 Martha HAYLETT (Ripon) (19:03): (42) My adjournment matter is for the attention of the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. The action I seek is that the minister joins me in my electorate of Ripon to inspect the quality of our rural and regional roads and discuss how the Andrews Labor government will help improve them. Our roads maintenance is the number one issue raised by locals across my electorate. It is an issue important to so many rural and regional Victorians because we rely on our roads to connect our communities and get us home to our families. They took an absolute beating last year, with all the rain and floods ripping many of them apart. I want to acknowledge the hard work currently being done by Regional Roads Victoria and local crews to fix many of our most flood-affected roads, including Beaufort-Lexton Road, Mortlake-Ararat Road and the Western and Wimmera highways. We are taking action to rebuild many sections of roads to get us moving again, but there is still more to do. I welcome the chance for the minister to inspect our roads and discuss how we can improve them more long term, including how we maintain and rebuild them beyond the immediate flood recovery.