Thursday, 13 November 2025

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (10:05): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes the reports raised concerning the deterioration of Victorian roads in the RACV’s My Country Road 2024 survey;

(2)   in accordance with standing order 10.01, requires the Leader of the Government to table in the Council, within 30 days of the house agreeing to this resolution:

(a) documents outlining the monitoring process and quality control for contractors building and repairing Victorian roads; and

(b) assessments, examinations, reports and ministerial briefs about the quality of Victorian roads, since December 2022.

I rise today to speak on my short-form documents motion requesting documents related to the monitoring process and quality control for contractors building and repairing Victorian roads.

It is no secret that the quality of Victorian roads is a major concern for my constituents in the Northern Victoria Region. In fact I cannot remember a week when I have not stood in this place and asked for yet another road to be repaired. While I commend the Minister for Roads and Road Safety in the other place for her prompt responses to my constituents’ concerns, we now find ourselves with another problem: the quality of the repairs being completed. Almost every week, if not multiple times a week, I receive correspondence from my constituents around repair work not going the distance. In some cases the repairs are failing in a matter of days. The potholes return, new surfaces crumble, rutting comes back worse than before, or in some cases new problems arise from works being rushed and not completed to a high standard. Road users pay their registration every year, somewhere around $800 per year for cars and SUVs. It is expected that their vehicles are kept in roadworthy condition yet, to borrow a phrase from Mrs McArthur, our roads are not carworthy.

All that my constituents and I want to see is that these contractors are being held to account by this government. We want to see that the works are being followed up on and that when these works fail, these failures are caught and dealt with. I ask this chamber to support this motion. Let us be transparent with our constituents and allow them to see that their concerns surrounding road repairs are being listened to and dealt with.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:07): I rise to share a few words on the short-form documents motion that has been brought forward to this house this morning by Ms Tyrrell. In doing so I thank and acknowledge her for raising this issue. One of the very many important issues that we deal with in this place concerns managing, expanding, improving and upgrading our transport networks, and that certainly includes the road network. This is an opportunity to talk about many of the investments that this government is currently making in relation to, for example, the better roads blitz. We have crews delivering thousands of road maintenance jobs, with 70 per cent of all funding going towards our regional roads, which I am sure will be of great interest to both Ms Tyrrell and Mrs McArthur, who I see in the chamber and who has raised her voice on this subject many times too.

I also wish to acknowledge that it was good to hear in Ms Tyrell’s contribution that the responses that she has received from Minister Horne, the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, have been very prompt. That is very good to hear. I certainly have had the same experience when raising all manner of roads issues in my region in the south-east with her. I always do get that fast response, so I am glad to hear that that is an experience widely shared in this chamber.

As part of that better roads blitz, between now and the middle of next year crews will be, and indeed already are, at work on hundreds of roads across our state’s road network, with works ranging from road rehabilitation and resurfacing, patching potholes and maintaining bridges to those more fundamental works to address the underlying issues rather than just patches. It also includes upgrading and installing traffic signage. It is not related to this blitz, but I know Mr Tarlamis and I were both very excited to see, just a couple of years ago, the new traffic lights at Kelletts Road and Henderson Road in Rowville being switched on. That has certainly helped to improve road safety in that area, especially as the Henderson Road bridge now connects locals to not just the Ventura bus depot but the other side at Knoxfield, increasing traffic on that local connector road. It is very important that those traffic lights are in place.

The blitz will also be targeting the state’s busiest travel and trade routes, which will help to get millions of people and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of freight to and from their destination smoothly. The roads statewide in this program have been prioritised based on expert assessments and community feedback, ensuring that upgrades are focused on where they are most needed. As well as repairing some of our busiest roads, crews will also be mowing, slashing and spraying tens of thousands of kilometres of roadsides, and inspecting and repairing thousands of bridges and other structures too.

This is a significant investment. In fact it is the most significant investment in this state’s history when it comes to maintaining our road networks. But it also comes on top of a further $964 million in the last financial year, which was until this year the largest single investment. That is cumulatively a figure that is very close to approaching $2 billion over two years being invested into this critical maintenance work, noting as well that this government has spent on average $781 million per year in our time in office maintaining roads, compared to just $493 million under the last Liberal–National government.

It is a topic that comes up for conversation, and I always appreciate when constituents raise road issues with me. It is an opportunity to try and fix issues, sometimes at the smaller end, sometimes at the bigger end. Indeed it came up in a family conversation just over the weekend too when I had some in-laws who drove down from the Central Coast in New South Wales and were commenting to me on the condition of roads, and I thought, ‘Oh, here we go, let’s have a good chat,’ but to my delight I discovered that they were in fact praising Victoria’s roads.

Renee Heath interjected.

Michael Galea: They were praising Victoria’s roads, Dr Heath, saying that compared to those roads in New South Wales and the freeways in and around the Central Coast and Sydney, we are actually far better – feedback I was not expecting to receive, but delightful feedback nonetheless. But that does not take away from the fact that even if people in New South Wales are saying that our roads are in far better shape than theirs – notwithstanding that – there is a lot of work to do. We have a minister who is dedicated to getting this work done, and the $976 million better roads blitz that is now underway is helping to make those works happen.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:12): I rise to support this documents motion in Ms Tyrrell’s name. Every day thousands of Victorians drive on roads that look like an obstacle course rather than a way to get from one place to the other. I always love listening to Mr Galea’s speeches. I love that guy. He is a good friend of mine but, sadly, he speaks and he spruiks about the conditions of the roads and Labor’s commitment to roads; however, the facts unfortunately tell another story. All of us from time to time will gild the lily, but I think a statement like that absolutely pole-vaults over the borders of truth.

The RACV My Country Road survey says it plainly: only 38 per cent of regional motorists rated their roads as good or excellent. That is down from 51 per cent just three years ago. That is a massive, massive decline. I would love to see how Mr Galea can marry those two up: the incredible talking points and the incredible commitment that Labor shows to roads, but then the actual facts – sometimes they are just so vastly different. Anyway, three quarters said they have to regularly swerve to avoid potholes. One in three reported damage to their cars. We saw this play out just last week, and I am sure all of you in this place would have followed Jacqui Felgate and all the different stories. Hopefully my colleague Wayne Farnham – if you do not follow Jacqui Felgate, hopefully you follow him. But the reality is that on the Princes Highway near Nar Nar Goon, a single pothole – just one of them, there are heaps and heaps, but let us just talk about one, zone in on one for a minute – damaged twenty cars in one day. Twenty families were stranded on the side of the road. I drove this –

Sonja Terpstra interjected.

Renee HEATH: I am just picking up on Ms Terpstra’s interjection there, who says, ‘How do you know?’ All right. Just a public call for the 20 families that were stranded on the side of the road: please email Ms Terpstra or me, and I will collate it and pass it on. Twenty families were stranded on the roadside paying for tows and repairs. Imagine being the poor roadside assist guy in the RACV – which one would you pick to help first? This is adding so much stress to already struggling families who are really limping through a cost-of-living crisis. There is even a Facebook page dedicated to potholes – ‘Beware of potholes on roads from Melbourne’ – if you want to look it up. Go and join and support it. Among the deluge of comments from four days ago by the Traralgon community, one said:

We just saw 9 cars pulled over near the Shell Service station (outbound), all with hazard lights on changing at least one tire each.

I am sure Ms Terpstra would like the proof of that too. So that is somebody that maybe –

Sonja Terpstra interjected.

Renee HEATH: They are people paying their taxes, paying their registration, paying their insurance, yet getting slugged again and again because of the repairs that their cars now require, because of Labor’s absolute inability to do one of their basic jobs: to maintain roads. But when roads fail, there are even more hidden costs. It is a cost to communities, a cost to our time when, as somebody said before – it might have been Ms Bath in her members statement – people are asked to slow down, rather than Labor just fixing the roads.

I am just going to jump ahead. In Gippsland we have seen a real disheartenment of different people, especially in tourist communities that have one road in and one road out, and places that are hard to get to, like Walhalla, Woods Point and Aberfeldy where, if the roads have terrible potholes, if they have to be cut to be fixed, these communities suffer incredibly. I commend Ms Tyrrell’s motion to the house, and I hope that all of you, in good conscience, if you have a good conscience, will vote for it.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:17): Again I only get 5 minutes to respond to a lot of this. As is the wont of the chamber at the moment, government should be gagged and not have the same amount of time to respond to these things. Nevertheless I want to thank Ms Tyrrell for bringing her motion to the house on road maintenance and note the sentiments therein. What I want to do is use the time that I have left, which is a small amount of time, to actually talk about the facts of these matters.

What we just heard in Dr Heath’s contribution – and I think there is a really strong propensity at the moment for the Liberals to become social media stars, because what we see is anything that gets talked about in this house all of a sudden ends up on social media with grabs from 3AW or Jacqui Felgate or whoever.

Members interjecting.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Yes, the echo chamber, and the creation of fake Facebook groups and all of that, just so we can get the rage bait going and the social media outrage. What I can say is that in regard to the video that Jacqui Felgate posted, what I saw was cars pulled over on the side of the road, but I did not actually see any potholes on the road. I was waiting to see what it was that caused these people to pull over. In fact I went and drove on that road the other week – because I was going to get some chickens, actually – and I did not see any of the stuff that you reported or that Jacqui Felgate reported, so I do not know. Magically, there is all this outrage around it; I want to see facts.

The good news for Victorians is that the Allan Labor government is spending $976 million, the largest single investment in road maintenance in the state’s history, because with a road network, the government actually does not have responsibility for a great majority of it – councils do. And we fund councils to fix these roads. But where there are problems, there are ways to get them fixed. For example, we have invested $976 million, and might I say that in my electorate in the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Albanese Labor government and the Allan Labor government have committed $25 million to looking at upgrading the Five Ways at Warrandyte, and we are starting consultation on that really, really soon. The fantastic Labor members – the Labor federal member for Deakin and the Labor federal member for Menzies – are fantastic advocates that we have now got in federal government to help partner with us to get things done.

What we have found happens is that the community expect us to act and we do. What I can say is that if there are people who have experienced damage to their car, drivers who have sustained damage may be entitled to compensation. I am not creating social media outrage like those opposite, but I encourage people who have legitimate claims to lodge a claim with the department through the Transport Victoria website. There are practical solutions for people who have sustained damage. Dr Heath, keep texting away to you 3AW mates and make sure they get this on social media. Keep it going, because I want to see this. Come on. Do not let us all down. I am sure Jacqui is watching us and so is 3AW. I am sure I am going to get a pile-on, which always gets created by those opposite – as if we do not know what you do.

But do you know what, the bottom line is that people do not vote based on social media outrage. What they do is they look to a government to actually get things done, and like I said – $976 million. Might I just say on this that when I sat on the floods inquiry, what we saw – and this was evidence based – was that when we have heavy rains and severe weather events, our road network gets damaged. Those opposite actually do not understand what it is like to govern. When you are in government, you have got to continuously upgrade your road networks because they get driven on a lot by heavy vehicles every day –

A member: You should be doing that.

Sonja TERPSTRA: We do. That is the thing, and I talk to constituents about this. I say, ‘Hey, if you want to actually see where we are upgrading roads, this is all publicly available information. Go to the VicRoads website and you can actually see where we are upgrading road networks. It is actually publicly available, and there are a lot of roadworks going on at the moment.’ Again, like I said, it is a constant thing where we have to keep upgrading, because when we have weather events, potholes do appear. Those opposite are saying, ‘Oh, they never upgrade and invest in roads.’ But we continually do that because our road networks continually need repairs and upgrades. It is not a static thing. Those opposite do not actually understand that.

Again, there is a $976 million investment from this government, plus the Albanese Labor government has committed $25 million in Warrandyte, in my electorate, to upgrade an intersection and for the planning around that so that we can make it better for people. Our investment includes multiple resurfacing jobs on the Princes Highway between Nar Nar Goon and Longwarry as well.

I just want to commend Ms Tyrrell for bringing this motion. As I said earlier, we do not oppose these documents motions. We are quite happy to share factual information with people in this chamber, and I note that when we do, they never do anything with it. They never do anything with it because it completely eviscerates their argument. When they see we are actually doing things, they do not want to talk about that.

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:22): I rise to support Ms Tyrrell’s motion. I am very pleased to rise to support Ms Tyrrell’s motion. I have not heard such a load of rubbish from the other side in some time. Do you know what, the problem is that you have got no quality control over your road building or your road maintenance. I once asked the head of VicRoads what his guarantee was on his road building. He said, ‘We don’t have one.’ I said, ‘What? So my toaster has got a better guarantee than your road building.’ It is shocking. We are in a situation where we do not have potholes out in country Victoria, we have got craters. We live in a constant situation of ‘Slow down’ signs. You cannot fix the roads, so you put a ‘Slow down’ sign up. That pothole in Dr Heath’s electorate has now got a camera. You are actually fining people for tripping over a pothole. You do not fix the pothole, you put a camera up. Ms Tyrrell is absolutely right: outside the tram tracks we are devastated. Our school buses are in trouble. Our farmers are in trouble. We cannot feed you in metropolitan Victoria because of the shocking state roads.

You criticised the councils. Let me tell you, most local road building is first class. The local roads are fine; it is your state roads that are hopeless. You have got built-in redundancy. You have got contractors that build roads badly. You do not fix the drainage and you do not fix the shoulders – and, guess what, they have got to go back and repair them. It is a wonderful model for the absolute waste of government money and a waste of taxpayers money. You cannot build a road in this state and you cannot maintain it properly; you are wasting taxpayers money, and the citizens of Victoria are paying the price. I agree, there are potholes now in metropolitan Melbourne. I do not know how you are not tripping over them on your motorbike, Sonja. Honestly and truly, it is a shocking state of affairs. Let alone the roadsides – they are just a disgrace. We have got graffiti everywhere and we have got weeds everywhere. We have got broken down wire rope barriers never to be fixed. They cost about a billion dollars for no good reason at all.

Mrs Tyrrell is absolutely right: roads are a disgrace in Victoria, especially in country Victoria.

A member interjected.

Bev McARTHUR: I will tell you what we did: we gave a million dollars to every rural council for roads and bridges funding, which they could look –

A member interjected.

Bev McARTHUR: You took that away. You cut it. You are busy –

Members interjecting.

The PRESIDENT: Order! Please. Mrs McArthur wants to do future contributions as well. She needs to save her voice a bit.

Bev McARTHUR: Thank you, President. It is a real struggle here sometimes. The interjections are just writ large. It is absolutely provoking. I am being provoked all the time, Mr President. Look, we need these documents. We need the assessments, the examination, the reports and the ministerial briefs – now, that will be fascinating; let us get them – about the quality of Victorian roads. Thank you, Mrs Tyrrell, for bringing this to our attention. It is critical we learn exactly what they are not doing in Victorian roads.

Motion agreed to.