Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Rural and regional roads

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (17:07): I move also to grieve this afternoon about the parlous state of country roads. Whether you are in Polwarth, Colac, down the Hamilton Highway, down the Princes Highway or along the Great Ocean Road, there is report after report after report of unsustainable potholes, edges on the sides of roads, drainage and other things really making it quite unsafe. Recently on school holidays I had the opportunity to sneak over the Murray River with my family, and the difference in the roads is really quite something. It is a shame to think that that most important of civic assets that we have in the state – that is our road network – is just becoming so dangerous and is in such a deteriorating state. It does not matter whether they are in the big cities or out in the country, Victorians are suffering from this.

I just point very clearly to one of the most tragic yet factual ways to measure the decline in Victorian roads and the investment in and management of them. These stats are, once again, available live as of now for the sad and tragic death toll on Victorian roads. From 30 August across the years there were 133 deaths back in 2018. We are now at 191 this year already. That is a 44 per cent increase in fatalities on Victorian roads over the last five years – a 44 per cent increase. That is a massive increase, and it is not just a one-off either. The five-year average is 151, and it has just been increasing. Even through the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, when up to 60 per cent fewer cars were on the road, the road toll still increased. I point specifically to both 2020 and 2021, which were much higher than 2018. Of course now at 191 it is becoming a real crisis in regional Victoria.

We know that this government has misallocated funds in an enormous way on its road network. We have seen the rollout of wire rope barriers, which are supposed to be saving lives and they are not. One of the reasons could be that time and time again now when we are driving down our highways and byways in regional Victoria these wire rope barriers are sitting damaged and broken on the side of the road. Anyone who knows about their efficacy knows that a broken wire rope barrier is actually more dangerous than a fully and correctly installed one. So this government not only cannot fix the potholes and dangerous intersections but is now not even able to maintain and look after the infrastructure it put in place in the last 10 years to try and keep people safe, and sadly it is coming out in the road toll.

We know it is to do with the quality of the roads, because the road toll data breaks it down into drivers and passengers. We have got a 38 per cent increase in drivers perishing on our roads but a massive 105 per cent increase for people in cars. It is a huge increase, and it is not being shared by cyclists; it is not being shared by motorcyclists and pedestrians. This is a result of our roads that should be fit for 100 kilometres an hour, for people travelling regularly to feel safe on the roads, and they are clearly becoming much less safe. While the increase in fatalities is shared between city and country, the numbers are stark. In rural Victoria only last year, 88; this year, 108 – a 31 per cent increase just on our rural roads in the last 12 months. When we look at the overall figure of 44 per cent year on year increasing across Victoria, then we know something is not happening that should be.

When discussing the road toll people are often quick to blame people and say there are too many hoons on the road or young people. Can I just share with you that I grieve for the way that our roads have gone, because it is not just our young drivers. There are significant increases in the age bracket from 21 to 39, and that maybe we could expect to see. But we are also seeing a tragic, nearly 50 per cent, increase in those over the age of 70 dying on our roads. You cannot accuse our oldies and mature drivers of being reckless hoons. That cannot be the excuse. It is about road quality, it is about safety on the roads, it is about our edges and it is about our line markings. It is about our safety infrastructure on the roads, which is just not up to spec. When we look right across the region, it is affecting families and it is affecting lives. So I grieve for those people today.

Finally, I want to spend some time grieving really for the lot of regional Victoria and the way this government has been targeting them just in the last six months. Starting only last Friday the Growing Suburbs Fund was denied to our fastest growing regional councils. My own area, the Surf Coast shire and the city of Torquay, was relying on that stream of funding to help pay for its new indoor pool, which is now set to be in jeopardy. This government has callously just slashed it away. Today in the Parliament they blamed the fact that COVID is no longer around. So because we do not have COVID, we now cannot have extra funding for our fastest growing regional councils, which actually is a nonsense. It does not make any sense, and yet this is the level of contempt this government holds for regional Victoria.

Just in my area we have seen the Geelong fast rail cancelled, we have seen the area growth fund cancelled and we have seen an enormous reduction in maternity services for Geelong and the Surf Coast. In fact who would have thought that we are now at the point where there have been five occasions since April when young mums have been diverted from Geelong through to Werribee. I mean, our second-largest city can no longer guarantee being able to provide birthing services to the women and families in our region, because it is just simply not funded. Again, the government solution is well beyond 2030. It is too long, and it is going to take too much time for people to wait that long.

I also grieve for the fact that in regional Victoria – I have spoken about the roads – there has been a significant cut to ongoing maintenance funding for our roads. So when we are driving on the roads, they feel terrible. We know they are dangerous and they are unsafe, and we know that this government has not prioritised them. It has deliberately taken funding from regional roads to put to its folly projects in Melbourne at the expense of country Victorians.

Of course nothing has symbolised the contempt for regional Victoria more than the cancellation of the Commonwealth Games. We grieve about that not because it is the loss of the international attention and the loss in tourism and the loss of focus and the loss of pride that many of our regional areas were expecting. In fact listening to the Senate inquiry, where there were Aboriginal groups, local tourism bodies, other agencies, they were setting themselves up to put their communities in the limelight for the future.

This government has a huge contempt for regional Victoria. It has a budget black hole; it has a budgetary problem. It is $200-something billion in the red. It has to find cost savings. It has to make cuts to services, and it is not looking at its vanity projects in Melbourne. It is not looking at tunnels or rail crossing removals, it is looking at regional Victorians. It is looking at health services, it is looking at road safety, it is looking at the funding for community infrastructure and it is penalising those communities that have less resilience, the least capacity to deal with significant cuts. For Victorians today, we grieve that this government refuses to listen, refuses to wind back its attack on country Victoria. This is not the way that regional Victorians can be sustainable in the future.