Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (17:28): I rise to speak on the Department of Transport and Planning’s annual report that was tabled last year. The Department of Transport and Planning of course is responsible for all of the maintenance on our roads in Victoria, and we know that our roads are in a deplorable state. In fact it is not just our roads. As I raised in my constituency question today, it is also the directional signs that are barely readable because the white lettering on them has shrunk and peeled off, and they are just left with the shadow of what was written there before. The intersection that I mentioned was that of the Goulburn Valley Highway and the Hume Freeway, and visitors to the region would not know where they are going. It is just disgraceful, the condition of that sign. But we know that in local areas when they have a disaster like a flood or a bushfire or whatever that for local governments to get funding out of the state government to refurbish bridges that are damaged or roads that are damaged, they have to have a set of photographs of what the road looked like before and a set of photographs of the after.

Local governments have been doing audits of all of their roads. But the City of Whittlesea, whilst doing an audit of their own roads, also did an audit of the arterial roads in their municipality, and we have 221 pages of defects on arterial roads in the City of Whittlesea. In fact not only are there 221 pages but there are a lot more photos, because most pages have four photos on them. There are 14 photos of large piles of dumped rubbish. Some of the worst of these are on Donnybrook Road and Craigieburn Road. Of guardrail damage in their municipality there are 54 photos. It is on all major roads. Some of the worst of it is on Donnybrook Road and Craigieburn Road again. Also audited were missing or damaged signs – there are 135 photos on major arterial roads of missing or damaged signs. Some are completely missing. Speed signs are lying on the ground, some of them face down – motorists could not possibly see them. And this does not even include the infamous Donnybrook Road sign, because that is in the City of Hume. 135 missing or damaged signs.

On defects in their road surfaces, there are 323 defects recorded: potholes, degraded surface, missing lines and edges that are breaking up on the roads. This is on almost every arterial road in the City of Whittlesea. The dead animals on the side of the road – this is really sad. There are actually 14 photos of rotting carcasses of kangaroos. Some are skeletal, some look like other animals have fed off the carcass, but they are all obviously not fresh roadkill; they are carcasses that have been left on the roadside to rot. Overgrown grass – we know this government does not like to mow the grass. There are 99 photos of nature strips, side roads, median strips, roundabouts, gutters and the bases of guardrails where the government has failed to mow the grass or maintain the growth of weeds. Fallen branches – there are 16 photos where tree branches have fallen across guardrails and the sides of roads, and some of them are obscuring signs. Drainage – there are 54 photos of broken or blocked drains and water pooling in gutters and on road surfaces. And of course graffiti – 97 photos of graffiti on state government infrastructure. Graffiti on poles, signs, underpasses, bridges, power substations, New Jersey barriers, fire hydrants – basically anywhere you can scrawl a tag.

This is a damning report on the state of arterial roads – the state government-managed roads – in the City of Whittlesea. I call on the Minister for Roads and Road Safety to actually get herself a copy of this report – it is available from the City of Whittlesea – and to start working through fixing all of these defects on the major arterial roads in the City of Whittlesea.