Thursday, 2 November 2023

Roadside vegetation

Richard RIORDAN (Polwarth) (17:15): (425) My adjournment debate this evening is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. I invite the minister to come to Polwarth to speak to the contractors who have contracts for roadside maintenance, slashing and clearing. The reason I would like the minister to come down and speak to these contractors is because the minister and the department have given the contractors responsible for roadside maintenance an impossible task. The impossible task is to keep our western Victorian roads safe with one lawn-mow a year, one grass-slash per annum.

We heard this morning in the media from Jason Heffernan, the CFA boss. He said that in south-west Victoria at the moment soil moisture is at record lows. We learned today that right throughout western Victoria we face the highest fire danger risk that we have seen in a long, long time, and one of the single biggest fire danger risks in western Victoria is the grass at roadsides and easements that crisscross western Victoria. It is highly dangerous. One of the only ways that we can keep those communities safe is in fact regular roadside maintenance – roadside slashing, roadside burning – to keep that fuel load down. Every scientist, every weather predictor – everybody – knows that the last three or four years has seen an enormous growth in roadside vegetation. This government has failed to maintain those roadsides, and it is becoming more and more dangerous.

One of the problems is not only do we have huge areas of unmanaged grasslands but with the rollout of safety barriers and other things in recent years motorists now have very few opportunities to turn around and escape if there is going to be a grassfire. One only has to reflect on the tragedy of 1969, when around 20 people lost their lives on the Princes Highway between Geelong and Melbourne when grassfires whipped across there and people were trapped in their cars and burnt to death.

That is not something that we want to see in western Victoria because this government has restricted the maintenance of our roads to one slash a year. One slash is simply not enough, not in a season like this, where anything cut only a few months ago is now going to be long and dry again in no time flat. It is simply not good enough. It is vital for the safety of road users and our local regional communities that the roads minister keeps her end of the bargain and makes sure the roadways – that land that is her responsibility, the department’s responsibility – are properly maintained and kept safe. We do not need a royal commission, we do not need inquiries, we do not need other investigations when the day comes that we have a grassfire in western Victoria again, because we simply all know safe roadways are well-maintained roadways.