Wednesday, 25 May 2022

Melton road infrastructure

Dr CUMMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:45): (1939) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety in the other place, and the action that I seek is for the government to urgently invest in the roads in the City of Melton. Now, the City of Melton is one of the fastest growing areas in Australia, with a population set to triple to half a million people in the next 30 years. Every year more than 7100 people move into Melton, and 52 babies are born each week; that is over 2800 a year. Right now the road infrastructure is not keeping pace with the residential growth. Years of underinvestment within the City of Melton have led to aged, rural-standard, congested roads that are a major safety concern. Analysis of the funding through the Victorian Big Build identified that the City of Melton has received no funding upgrade to the critical roads while outer suburban councils have shared in $4.7 billion over recent years. Roads in the City of Melton are at capacity and projected to get worse. There are high volumes of traffic use on roads that desperately need more lanes, better intersections and major safety upgrades.

The City of Melton and the entire community, through the Fix Our Roads campaign, is requesting that the state government upgrade the Western Freeway, including a new interchange at Bulmans Road; duplicate and upgrade the Melton Highway; duplicate and upgrade Hopkins Road; duplicate Christies Road; duplicate the Robinsons Road, Westwood Drive and Calder Park Drive corridor; and build the Calder Park interchange. Now, these roads have had nine deaths, 163 serious crash injuries and 336 other crash injuries in the last six years. With over 70 per cent of the workforce leaving the municipality every day, the creation of local jobs has never been more important. Council’s investment attraction strategy developed by Ernst & Young demonstrates that the accelerated pipeline of road infrastructure will help attract commercial investment that will create over 100 000 jobs over the next 30 years.

The City of Melton has significant land availability in the western state-significant industrial precinct and the Cobblebank metropolitan activity centre. Better roads to these commercial precincts are essential to improve accessibility and productivity and to create more local employment opportunities. I look forward to the minister’s response.