Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Department of Transport and Planning

Report 2022–23

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:20): I rise to speak on the Department of Transport and Planning annual report 2022–23, and I would like to highlight the failures of this government to adequately maintain the road network in Victoria, particularly the regional road network. What the annual report reveals, on page 44, is that the measure ‘Road area treated: roads in regional Victoria’ actually failed to meet its target by more than 25 per cent. The government failed to meet their own target. Their own target was to treat 12,140,000 square metres of roads – this is maintenance of regional roads – but they only treated 9,029,000, so a failure by this government by more than 25 per cent to meet that road target.

The ABC actually reported yesterday – and this is no surprise, considering that failure to meet the maintenance target on regional roads – that there are more than 60 Victorian regional road sites that have been waiting for repairs for more than a year. That is no surprise to people in my electorate. We have a saying in our electorate that the government requires us to have cars that are roadworthy, but the roads are not carworthy. We also have another saying, and that is that we used to drive on the left of the road, but now we drive on what is left of the road. That is because the roads are in such a state of disrepair.

The annual report goes on to reveal even more failures on the regional road targets by this government. Minor road improvements for regional roads, on page 45, shows that the government actually failed to meet that target by almost 45 per cent. This is an absolute disgrace, that the government cannot even get their targets right. Also, the bridge strengthening and replacement program – they failed to meet that target by almost 29 per cent. The failures continue to go on and on under this government. The regional report also reveals that the program works completed within agreed time frames did not even meet their target. In fact they missed that target by almost 50 per cent – 47.5 per cent of projects were not completed within the agreed time frames. This government is really failing regional Victorians on roads.

One of the things that comes through our office regularly is a number of people wanting to claim compensation for damage to their vehicles, particularly their tyre rims that have been severely damaged. The government will only pay if a claim is worth $1580 or more. But even with that small amount to claim, they actually only paid out one claim last year. You can see in the last three years the way that these figures have gone up. In 2020–21 there were 298 claims. The government did not pay out any. In 2021–22, that figure went to 755 claims, and they paid out three, one of which was in regional Victoria and two in Melbourne. Then in 2022–23, the 2020–21 figure had increased fivefold. It was actually 1532 claims, and they paid one claim. This is an absolute disgrace.

The budget papers revealed last year that the government had cut the road maintenance budget by 25 per cent, and if we go back over further budgets, we know that they have cut the budget by 45 per cent since 2020. No wonder our roads are in such a state of disrepair. No wonder local newspapers are running surveys on Facebook for people to name the worst roads in their area. Certainly the Shepparton News is doing this, and Echuca Road, the Midland Highway and the Goulburn Valley Highway get regular runs on that particular site.