Wednesday, 17 August 2022

 Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:36): This morning I was pleased to table a combined hard copy and electronic petition on behalf of the traders of Albert Street, Sebastopol, who have been treated so appallingly by this government, its local members, its ministers, departments and agencies. 1392 people showed their solidarity and support for businesses that are losing up to three-quarters of their income due to the nearly year-long roadworks, which have closed their shop frontages, obscured their properties from view and made access incredibly complicated. The roadworks have an estimated duration of 43 weeks, and they come on the back of two years of near constant Andrews government COVID closures.

I have spoken to these people at length. I have visited them and talked to them about the situation they face. They are not unrealistic. They do not oppose progress, and they recognise that sometimes inconvenience is unavoidable. But this project has been a disaster from the start, and the finish is still nowhere in sight. Not only has the duration and phasing been designed without thought for businesses, the communication has been non-existent. Road closure timings and long-planned temporary access have been modified without notice. In one case a business arranged an expensive shop refitting to coincide with an enforced closure only to find out on the day that the dates had changed and their carefully coordinated works closure and access closure no longer coincided. Deliveries have been impossible. Screens have hidden businesses. Pedestrian and traffic access has been made all but impossible. Basic services like water have not been consistently maintained by contractors. Unplanned water outages have cost businesses thousands in lost revenue and in damage to equipment. Yet despite this incompetence the businesses have been offered no hope—neither improved communication nor a rethink of the closure duration—or financial support.

Technically Major Road Projects Victoria, which is managing these works on behalf of the Department of Transport, is ‘maintaining access’, so no-one is eligible for support. But that is not the reality. The numbers do not lie. The car wash has gone from 150 cars a day to just three on Sundays, and it is no surprise when the access maintained is along a dirt track—hardly acceptable for a freshly washed car. Businesses are losing tens of thousands of dollars. That is simply a fact. Labor local members and ministers seem to be nowhere in this. They did not meet the traders for months, and when they were eventually forced into doing so, they offered precious little. Coffee vouchers and car-cleaning credits do not pay rents, rates, utility bills and bank loans. Vouchers are a cynical tool to make government popular with locals getting freebies but do little to help the businesses destroyed. Life savings are being lost due to the poor design of the project, the incompetence in delivering it and the heartlessness in failing to react to the problems raised. Traders have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because they do not know how to run their businesses. It is because the Andrews government has cut them off. I have huge sympathy for those affected. They have done everything right and received no hearing or help. Hence this petition to Parliament, which I am so pleased to support.

I implore the Minister for Roads and Road Safety to intervene, get this project delivered quickly and smartly and let businesses open and get back in the black. If he does not, the next step, legal action, is being prepared. It is sad to think of the waste of time, stress, money and effort which will go into lengthy court action. It is a terrible condemnation of the project, of the complaint management, that these citizens may be forced to sue their own government to get a fair hearing.