Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Donnybrook Road, Kalkallo

Petition

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (17:23): I would like to speak on a tabled petition, and I would like to thank a constituent of mine, Gaurav Ramchandani, for organising this petition of 685 citizens of Mickleham, Kalkallo and Donnybrook:

The petition of certain citizens of the State of Victoria draws to the attention of the Legislative Council the ongoing congestion and traffic delays for the Hume Highway, M31, exit ramp to Donnybrook, as well as traffic from Mickleham and Mickleham Business Park. The Donnybrook Road bridge over Hume Highway needs to be upgraded by adding two additional lanes, one on each side, to increase safety, reduce congestion and improve travel time for the Kalkallo and Donnybrook communities.

It wants the Legislative Council to call on the government to meet this demand.

I think it is an important one. It is one that Ms Lovell and I have advocated for over a long period of time with residents, and it is a view advocated by many residents. To draw you back to where we started, in 2022 the government committed $6 million for a slip lane on the Mitchell Street roundabout on Donnybrook Road, which would ease some traffic congestion on Donnybrook Road. People were waiting over an hour just to get out of their housing estate because their housing estate had one road in and one road out connected to an old farm track which they had not actually duplicated. Residents were pretty sick of this. I only got elected in 2022, but it caused some of the biggest incoming traffic in terms of phone calls and inquiries to my office. So I worked with that community very closely. We managed to make it a statewide issue on the ABC, on A Current Affair, on Sunrise and in the Daily Mail – lots of media – till the government was dragged kicking and screaming to bring forward that commitment for a slip lane, which they had not planned on building until 2026, to September 2023. It is funny, when there is statewide media attention, how quickly they can shuffle things forward in the roads portfolio.

Now the government is refusing to duplicate the bridge over the Hume. They have recently changed the speed limits on the Hume Highway going north. It is no longer 100 kilometres an hour, it is only 80 kilometres an hour, so the traffic on Donnybrook Road is so bad it is slowing the entire state down. And yes, there are queues all the way to Craigieburn. But that seems to be the solution for this government, because they have signed up with, I suspect, a very small amount of money, because the feds are contributing about 90 per cent to the slip lane we just talked about. They have now decided they are going to blow up the roundabout they upgraded thanks to our advocacy and build traffic lights. So a roundabout they have just installed and a slip lane they just installed a couple of years ago – they have now decided they are going to spend millions to blow it up and put in traffic lights rather than tackling the actual issue, which is the bridge over the Hume.

I thank my Liberal colleagues who were in government from 2010 to 2014, because they actually had the foresight – and I want to particularly acknowledge Matthew Guy – when they were building Mickleham to sit the developers down to sign a developer contribution plan, which meant the Mickleham side of Donnybrook Road was completely duplicated before and as people moved in, not decades later.

We have got an old farm track connecting tens of thousands of new homes, which this government obviously do not have the money to duplicate, and instead of duplicating the bridge over the Hume, which everyone wants, they want to duplicate a small bridge over the Merri Creek and blow up a roundabout they only just built and put in traffic lights. Well, the communities of Mickleham and Kalkallo and Donnybrook deserve better than this government with its ad hoc approach to planning and its ad hoc approach to roads.

I have invited the Minister for Roads and Road Safety repeatedly to come to Donnybrook Road with me at peak hour to see for herself what it looks like and what the daily commute is like for these residents. I have been out at Donnybrook Road at 6 in the morning to view the traffic, and it is awful. We have got inadequate bus infrastructure as well, no public transport, and these communities are left to languish because the government cannot manage money. It is communities in Kalkallo, Mickleham and Donnybrook that are paying the price.