Rural and regional roads
Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:46): (695) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. My Eastern Victoria constituent was travelling on the Longwarry Road towards Modella to spend the day on the beautiful Mornington Peninsula – and why wouldn’t you want to do that? That is in Eastern Victoria Region. The Koo Wee Rup-Longwarry Road is an important C-class road. It is a regional road that supports locals and the agricultural industry. It connects Central and West Gippsland on towards the Mornington Peninsula. But it nearly turned into a disaster day for one particular family. They were travelling along that road and there was a complete disintegration on one side of the road, a gaping hole so wide you could put a Mini Moke inside of it. Unfortunately, there was another car coming on the other side of the road where the hole was which proceeded to cross onto my particular constituent’s side of the road. Thankfully, a tragedy was averted as they missed each other by millimetres, but this highlights once again the fact that the Allan government over successive years have undermined our road maintenance program. They have cut budgets to the program; in fact since 2020 there has been a 45 per cent cut in road maintenance funding and, tragically, we all know the figures.
Last year 296 families grieved the loss of Victorians on our roads, a 24 per cent increase from 2022 and the highest toll in the last 15 years. These are terrible and tragic statistics. Of those, 174 occurred on rural and regional roads, roughly 58 per cent of that total shocking and sad figure. I will not shoot the messenger and I will not say that Regional Roads Victoria is at fault. They get given a budget. The budget only stretches so far. They have contracts that they must fulfil. I am sure there are people in Regional Roads Victoria who would love to invest money in innovation, who would love to produce roads where contracts are designed to ensure we have enduring road surfaces, but there seems not to be the will nor the appetite by this government to care about the country or its roads. So I call on the minister to initiate an assessment on that Koo Wee Rup-Longwarry Road, to start those rectification works and to fill in the pothole that is the size of a Mini Moke.