Thursday, 31 July 2025

Ministers statements: rural and regional roads

Melissa HORNE (Williamstown – Minister for Ports and Freight, Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Minister for Health Infrastructure) (14:42): I have never met a pothole I did not want to fix, so it is a pleasure to update the house on how the Allan Labor government is doing exactly that, providing smoother and more reliable journeys. Over the past year crews have been out busy delivering our $960 million program of road repairs right across the state. They have rebuilt and repaved hundreds of kilometres of roads, fixed thousands of potholes and slashed tens of thousands of kilometres of grass, as the member for Sunbury well knows.

We know that this is especially important to regional communities, which is why we have done 70 per cent of this work on the roads that they rely on every day. We have completely rebuilt parts of the Beaufort-Lexton Road in Ripon, the Korumburra-Inverloch Road in Bass, the Bacchus Marsh-Gisborne Road in Eureka and the Tilden-Woodend Road in Macedon. The member for South-West Coast is also pleased to know that I have been out on the roads in her electorate, taking her up on her longstanding invitation once again. I am disappointed she was not there, because she was probably sitting behind the keyboard bashing out letters while we have been out on the ground delivering, but I know she is very excited that we have done work in her community with sections of the Princes Highway, the Terang-Mortlake Road and the Mackinnons Bridge–Noorat road all rebuilt from the ground up.

But we are not done. We have delivered a record program and will be rolling out another one in spring, backed by a $976 million investment from this government, the largest ever in a single year. We have got the cracks in our roads sorted, but as for the cracks in the Liberal Party, they are widening by the day.