Tuesday, 9 September 2025

Western Highway maintenance

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (18:43): (1928) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. I am sure everyone in here is familiar with the saying ‘One small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.’ That was of course in reference to the moon landing. However, those comments can also apply to the craters that are on the Western Highway at the moment, because that is what they are, and it takes one giant leap to get over some of these craters, they are that large.

Georgie Crozier interjected.

Joe McCRACKEN: You are completely right, it is dangerous – so dangerous that in fact last Saturday there were not one, not two but seven cars in a row lined up on the Western Highway, all experiencing difficulties with the same section of road just near Trawalla, which is in my electorate. It got so bad that it even got mentioned on local media. Many photos were put online, and extensive damage was done to multiple vehicles. Tyres were done, thousands of dollars of damage was inflicted. You might think, ‘How did this happen?’ Well, the explanation from the department when they went on local media was, ‘Oh, it happened in the storm on the Friday. That’s how it happened. It wasn’t anything to do with the bad road conditions. It was a storm.’ I am sorry, but that is a complete lie. The conditions were poor much before that, and they have been notorious. So for the department to go there and say ‘Oh, it was a storm’ is a complete joke, and they really should be reprimanded for that, because to mislead the public like that is just shameful.

The action that I seek is for the minister for roads to fix that particular part of the Western Highway, and we are not talking about just re-sheeting it – it needs a proper fix from foundation up, because people are literally spending thousands and thousands of dollars repairing their vehicles, thousands of dollars that they could spend in other parts of their life. Maybe in a cost-of-living crisis the government might consider this to be a particularly important matter. Other parts of the country have very good roads, but in Victoria we seem hell-bent on spending money everywhere else but on our country roads. When you have got buses, trucks, commuters and bikes going on this every single day, I hope and I pray that we do not have a fatality, and my fear is that that might be the thing that finally jolts the government into action and actually doing something about this notorious stretch of road which needs significant work.