Thursday, 20 March 2025

Northern Metropolitan Region roads

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (23:26): (1538) My adjournment is directed towards the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and I seek the action of the minister on behalf of residents in the north to address their concerns around built-up waste and rubbish and overgrowth of weeds on major roads in my electorate, like the M80 Western Ring Road, the Tulla, Pascoe Vale Road and others. These roads are vital transport corridors in my community. The M80 ring-road is used by 165,000 motorists every single day and Pascoe Vale Road connects communities from Moonee Ponds through to Roxburgh Park. Residents and road users have been raising concerns with me, as their local member, about how piles of rubbish are simply left to grow even bigger, ignored by councils and definitely ignored by authorities like VicRoads. I have spoken numerous times in this chamber about widespread rubbish dumping in my electorate, particularly around the City of Hume and places like Whittlesea and Mitchell shire, but in the last few months there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of litter lining these important roads.

This is an issue for Victoria’s reputation as a state that is attractive to tourists, because the first thing people see when they leave an airport and go on the Tulla or go around the ring-road is rubbish, graffiti and overgrown weeds. In every other city you go to – if you go to Sydney and get on the M2 – it is all clean, but if you go to Victoria the state of the roads and the overgrowth, the rubbish and the graffiti say a lot about the state Victoria is in right now. It says a lot about the fact that we are heading towards $188 billion of debt, paying $25 million of interest a day – over $1 million of interest an hour. It says a lot about that, because we clearly cannot afford to clean up our roads and make our state look beautiful again, make our state a place where you come and think, ‘Wow, this is great.’ People would not even have to drive all the way from the airport if we had an airport rail link in the first place. This is very concerning. I suspect there is a lack of regular maintenance and waste collection. It creates an unpleasant sight, particularly for people visiting our state. I seek the minister’s attention and action to approve waste collection and the management of weed overgrowth along our major roadways in the northern suburbs. I ask the minister to work with VicRoads to take action to address this issue.