Thursday, 19 June 2025

Omeo Highway

Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:38): (1739) The adjournment matter that I have tonight is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, and the action that I seek is for the minister to investigate and provide me with a report on why it took VicRoads contractors several days to clear the Omeo Highway of snow during a peak holiday weekend when there were accurate weather forecasts of heavy snowfall. The King’s Birthday long weekend is a time when many Victorian families like to get away for a holiday and visit the snow. Alpine operators were concerned that snowfall may be light this year, following a warm autumn, but the cold snap in recent weeks led to an accurate forecast that there would be heavy snowfall from Friday 6 June through to Sunday. Snow on Friday and Saturday had carpeted 5 or 6 kilometres of the Omeo Highway near Christmas Creek in a scenario that felt like deja vu from last year.

One bed and breakfast operator, who had guests coming to stay at his accommodation, said that a van was able to make it through on Saturday afternoon, but by Sunday morning the snow was too thick. About 1.5 kilometres in, the middle of the Omeo Highway now had impassable snow, and a visitor in a two-wheel drive, even with tyre chains, could not make it up the road. The accommodation operator called VicRoads several times on Sunday afternoon to complain that the road had not been cleared. The call reference number is 503484460. He was told by VicRoads that a crew was on its way to clear the snow, but they never turned up and the snow was not cleared. Instead a hundred kilometres of road was simply closed off, from Omeo through to Mitta, at about 4:30 pm on Sunday, forcing visitors to turn around and take a long detour.

There is a real concern among tourism operators and visitors travelling to the alpine regions that the Omeo Highway was not inspected or actively managed for snow risk. According to the Department of Transport and Planning’s road management plan, obstructions like snow are expected to be cleared in 4 hours. However, in this case, just like last year, the only response was a late closure of the road long after the snow had become a problem. There is a worry that instead of properly inspecting and actively managing the road, contractors only reacted after complaints were made by operators and the local Omeo police. Maintenance crews finally turned up on Tuesday with a grader and six four-wheel drives, but by then the long weekend was already over and many had gone home.

This was a dangerous situation. Dozens of visitors in other locations became trapped in the snow that weekend and had to be rescued. It is unacceptable for the agency tasked with the management of these roads to abandon their responsibilities in this way. VicRoads and road maintenance contractors should have been ready for snow and prepared to act promptly to clear the roads, but their reaction was unacceptably slow. The minister has obviously not learned the lesson from last year, when I raised this very same issue on the same stretch of the Omeo Highway. This will keep happening until the minister holds contractors to account.