Wednesday, 19 November 2025

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:41): I rise to speak on the Department of Transport and Planning’s annual report 2024–25, which was tabled on 30 October this year. Page 33 of that report talks about the amount of road area that has been patched in regional Victoria. The target was 1,033,000 square metres. What did this government achieve? They achieved only 566,000 square metres, 45 per cent below the target, so it is no wonder the roads in regional Victoria are so bad. The Weekly Times commented on this, saying:

Department of Transport annual reports show the government only managed to undertake maintenance work on 2.2 per cent of the state’s dilapidated regional roads in 2024–25, compared to 5 to 6 per cent of the network in the years leading up to 2022–23.

We see that roadworks in regional Victoria are declining whilst roads are falling into a dangerously bad state of disrepair. Yet in this house last week we had Ms Terpstra tell us her opinions of this. She said that Jacqui Felgate had fabricated a story about potholes on a road. What Ms Terpstra told us is that the Labor Party are pothole deniers. They do not think there are potholes because Ms Terpstra could not see them in a photograph. There are many potholes in regional Victoria, and the visuals that are being put up on Facebook do not lie. In fact just today I was sent some posts from up my way, from Yackandandah and from Beechworth. The Yackandandah drone Facebook page, on 5 November, had two pictures of two ducks enjoying a very large pothole on Yackandandah Road.

Sonja Terpstra: On a point of order, President, Ms Lovell is using a prop, and I ask that she not be allowed to use that prop.

Wendy LOVELL: I am quoting –

Sonja Terpstra: No, you are holding up a photo and waving it around the chamber.

Wendy LOVELL: I was not holding it up to you.

The PRESIDENT: I will not uphold that point of order.

Wendy LOVELL: We can see in this photograph that was on the Yackandandah drone page that that portion of the road had been repaired before but the pothole has grown so large that two ducks were enjoying themselves in it. In Beechworth there is a pothole on Sydney Road that is so large that they call it the cold plunge pool. They are saying that they could go in and enjoy that after a sauna. In fact someone creatively posted a picture of this very large pothole that is very deep with people in it enjoying a cold plunge after their sauna.

Ms Terpstra does not take roads seriously, but the Liberals and National parties do. We know that the state of our roads is so bad because this government is not investing in proper maintenance, and when things are being maintained, they are not being repaired properly. Several people have contacted me about the state of road repairs. In fact I witnessed one day, in the middle of the pouring rain, some people out pouring some pre-mixed material into a pothole, and you knew that just was not going to last when the pothole was already full of water.

I was once contacted by a constituent who has many years of experience working in road construction. He told me that most work sites do not even use the correct equipment to ensure the repairs meet the required standard. He ended up resigning from one company because he knew their dodgy repair practices would mean the same section of road would have to be redone in a few months time. In 2023 I complained to the minister about the poor state of repairs on Katamatite-Nathalia Road, which had been repaired using pre-mix that broke up when the first large vehicle drove over it. Not only are these roads in country Victoria dangerous, they are disgraceful. The government need to start taking them seriously, but as Ms Terpstra has told us, the Allan Labor government are pothole deniers. They do not think that there is a problem. They cannot see the potholes. Ms Terpstra must drive around –

Sonja Terpstra interjected.

Wendy LOVELL: Maybe she needs to get her glasses checked, because the roads are a disgrace.