Wednesday, 17 June 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:49): (2592) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. The action I seek, Minister, is that you urgently review Transurban, Citylink and West Gate Tunnel toll administration fees, seek parity with the reforms now being pursued in New South Wales and establish a service level fairness mechanism for motorists when toll roads fail to deliver the service for which commuters are paying a high price. This issue has been raised with me by constituents in western Victoria, including commuters from Geelong and Waurn Ponds who travel into Melbourne and rely on CityLink as part of a long, expensive daily journey. For them tolls are not an occasional inconvenience on an annual holiday trip. They are daily recurring costs deducted from their wages before the day has even begun.

What makes this especially galling is not just the toll itself; it is the administration fee regime that sits on top of it. In Victoria a missed CityLink toll of only a few dollars can attract an administration fee of $16.13 on a first notice and $31.49 on a further notice. If left unpaid, these matters can then escalate into state-enforced fines. That is very difficult to defend as simple cost recovery. In fact it simply is not cost recovery; it is another fee, another charge, disproportionate and unfair, particularly when working Victorians are facing serious cost-of-living pressures.

New South Wales has acted. Following its independent toll review Transurban will cut toll notice administration fees there entirely. So the question for Victoria is obvious: why is this Labor government letting Transurban get away with charging our commuters substantially more for literally the same action? It is the same company, the same systems, yet Victorians pay so much more. This is not a new concern. The Liberals and Nationals have warned for years that Labor’s Transurban deal was a bad deal for motorists. We warned against the extension of CityLink tolls to fund the West Gate Tunnel. We warned motorists would pay more for longer, and now we see the same pattern again – Victorian drivers paying the price while Labor refuses to stand up to Transurban. Minister, commuters in western Victoria deserve better. The action I seek, again, is that you review these excessive administration fees, bring Victoria into line with New South Wales’s reform and develop a toll rebate or waiver mechanism when toll roads operate materially below standard.