Wednesday, 2 August 2023

Western Victoria roads

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (19:07): (263) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action I seek is for the minister to join me and a delegation from the Western Highway Action Committee and the South West Victoria Alliance of councils to discuss the critically dangerous condition of state government-managed roads in western Victoria and the need for urgent funding to fix our roads and make them safe.

The south-west alliance of councils covers off on all of the councils in the south-west of the state: Colac Otway, Moyne, Southern Grampians, Glenelg, Warrnambool and Corangamite. As anyone who lives in this part of the state would understand, it has the worst roads in the state. This is a finding that the RACV determined a number of years ago – that western Victoria, south-west Victoria, was the home to absolutely the worst roads in the state. As I hear from my constituents on a regular basis, those roads are not getting any better, and that is because Labor keep on cutting the funding to Regional Roads Victoria, which means they cannot do their job of resurfacing and waterproofing those roads. The water gets in and then we see these massive potholes created through the road surface. This is something we are seeing not just in that south-west corner, though. We are also seeing it in the northern half of my electorate.

The Western Highway action group have been fierce advocates for many, many years for duplication of the Western Highway. This is a different matter, but something they are very keen to see is the duplication of the highway extended beyond Beaufort right through not just to Stawell but to Horsham and eventually to the border. But because these works have been pushed back and pushed back – the duplication of the highway was due to be completed in 2016 – what we have seen is a gradual erosion of maintenance through that area, and now the potholes are just covering the highway. It is incredibly dangerous to drive on the Western Highway at this point in time. Basically from Ararat right through to Melbourne is horrific, but it is also dangerous west of Ararat. There are sections of the highway that have been reduced to just 60 kilometres per hour. It is so dangerous at night-time because you cannot see the potholes, and many travellers now know if you travel in the right-hand lane, there are fewer potholes than there are on the left, so people are travelling in a way that is not very safe and putting their lives at risk and putting other people’s lives at risk too.

We need to make sure we have safe country roads and keep country people safe, so I do urge the minister to meet with these two important groups in my community. Both of these groups have written to the minister seeking a meeting, and the minister has not responded, so I put on the record tonight that I have asked the minister to join me and the south-west alliance of councils and Western Highway action group to talk roads.