Tuesday, 2 June 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (22:56): (2546) My adjournment tonight is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety – not foreign affairs – and the action I seek is that the minister restore full funding for the Ararat and Beaufort bypasses, publish a clear delivery timetable for both projects and confirm when the Western Highway duplication between Ballarat and Stawell will finally be completed. The 2026–27 state budget has cut $35.5 million from the Ararat and Beaufort bypass projects on the Western Highway. The Ararat bypass has been cut by $16.7 million and the Beaufort bypass by $18.8 million. Both projects have been reduced to just $500,000 each in 2026–27. That is effectively mothballing two critical road safety projects for another year at the very least. The budget papers say this money has been reprioritised to the Western Highway duplication from Ballarat to Stawell, but that explanation raises more questions than it answers. The total estimated investment for that project has been changed from $656 million to ‘to be confirmed’, and the completion date remains to be confirmed. It seems the government cannot say what the project will cost, it cannot say when it will be completed and it definitely cannot say when the Ararat and Beaufort bypasses will be built.

What are local communities supposed to make of this? It is completely disrespectful, quite apart from dangerous, given the road safety requirements. The Ararat and Beaufort bypasses are not luxuries; they are safety, freight and local amenity projects on one of Victoria’s most important road corridors. They would remove heavy vehicles from town centres, improve local safety and support regional freight and tourism. The duplication between Buangor and Ararat would separate traffic on one of the most dangerous single carriageway sections of highway in this state. In the 10 years to June 2025 the Western Highway between Ballarat and Stawell recorded 171 crashes, 21 fatalities and a hundred serious injuries. In just eight months between November 2024 and July 2025 seven people were killed on the Western Highway near Ararat. Those figures should shock the government into action. Instead Labor has stripped funding from the bypasses and left both projects on life support. The action I seek is simple: restore the funding, publish the timelines and deliver these long-promised road safety upgrades for western Victoria.