Wednesday, 28 May 2025

Road maintenance

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (14:17): My question is to the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. Why is the government reducing the area of road-patching works next year by 93 per cent?

Melissa HORNE (Williamstown – Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Minister for Health Infrastructure) (14:17): I thank the Leader of the National Party for his question. There are a few things in life that you can actually be certain of: night follows day, Peter Hunt writes an inaccurate article and the Leader of the National Party asks a question on the back of it. But that to one side, what I can say is that just two weeks ago the Premier, the Leader of the House and I were out there announcing what this year’s roadside blitz will look like, and it is $976 million. What we will do is spend nearly $2 billion; we spent $1 billion this year, and we are about to spend almost $1 billion next year. What our engineers do is they –

Danny O’Brien: On a point of order, Speaker, on the question of relevance, the question was not about the money, it was about the works actually being done – a 93 per cent reduction.

Ben Carroll: On the point of order, Speaker, the Leader of the Nationals went to patching – not patching gaps over there but patching the road surfaces – and the minister just went to $2.5 billion invested in roads. I urge you to let the minister finish her answer.

The SPEAKER: The minister to come back to the question.

Melissa HORNE: In relation to patching, this was a new budget measure that we introduced two years ago because following the flooding works that we did –

Members interjecting.

Melissa HORNE: Without assistance, thank you. We introduced this new measure because we have got our engineers out there doing the work that is required on our roads that is right for the circumstance. When it was flooding, we were out there doing the potholes. Then we needed to do the patching work, and now we are out there doing significant rehab works across our network. That is what we are focusing on to be able to invest in our roads with a record investment.

Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (14:20): The minister just said we are now moving on to rehabilitation. The government failed to meet its target for road rehabilitation or resurfacing last year, and next year it is reducing the target again. How can the government claim to be spending more money yet delivering less road maintenance?

Melissa HORNE (Williamstown – Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Minister for Health Infrastructure) (14:21): The member for Gippsland South fails to understand that we are investing a record amount in our road network. We are on track at the moment to deliver 4.7 million square metres, or approximately 500 kilometres, of major road repairs right across the state. That has far exceeded the combined target of 4.2 million square metres. I appreciate that the member for South Gippsland possibly has a little FOMO not being in PAEC anymore. I appreciate the questions, but we are delivering more work than ever before.