Wednesday, 29 July 2026

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (11:02): I move:

That this house:

(1)   notes that Victoria’s road network is fundamental to the safety, economic prosperity and connectivity of communities across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria;

(2)   acknowledges that Victorians rely on a safe and well-maintained road network for access to employment, education, health care, freight transport, tourism, and emergency services;

(3)   notes:

(a) the declining condition of many state-managed roads, including deteriorating surfaces, potholes, damaged shoulders, inadequate drainage, faded line markings and deteriorating safety barriers;

(b) that the condition of the Hume, Western, Midland and Goulburn Valley highways have been the subject of sustained community concern;

(c) that deteriorating road conditions:

(i) increase the likelihood of crashes;

(ii) create significant hazards for motorcyclists and cyclists;

(iii) increase the risk of tyre failures and vehicle damage;

(iv) place emergency services personnel at greater risk;

(v) increase freight operating costs through vehicle damage and delays;

(4)   expresses concern that short-term pothole repairs have failed to provide lasting improvements, resulting in increased maintenance costs and ongoing safety risks;

(5)   condemns the government for its ongoing mismanagement of the road network, its failure to prioritise preventative maintenance and long-term asset renewal, and provide road users with safe and reliable road infrastructure;

(6)   calls on the government to:

(a) publish a statewide road condition assessment identifying roads requiring urgent intervention;

(b) prioritise permanent surface reconstruction;

(c) establish publicly reported maintenance performance targets, including response times for hazardous defects; and

(d) provide regular public reporting on the condition of Victoria’s arterial road network and maintenance expenditure.

This motion speaks to the concerning condition of Victoria’s road network, a matter that affects every Victorian regardless of where they live. Roads are not a luxury; they are essential public infrastructure. They connect our communities, support our economy, allow children to get safely to school, enable patients to access health care, keep freight moving and allow emergency services to respond when every second counts. Yet across Victoria, particularly in regional and rural areas, our roads are deteriorating before our eyes. Anyone who drives through northernVictoria knows exactly what I am talking about. Potholes appear almost overnight, road shoulders are crumbling, line markings have faded to the point where they are almost invisible at night or in wet weather, drainage failures leave roads vulnerable to further damage, and temporary repairs are often washed away within weeks, if not days. It is not simply an inconvenience, it is a genuine public safety issue.

In 2025, 291 people lost their lives on Victorian roads, and 268 fatal crashes occurred across the state. Tragically, 61 of those killed were motorcyclists, one of the groups most vulnerable to poor road surfaces and road defects. Even more concerning is where these tragedies are occurring. The TAC found that more than 70 per cent of people killed on country roads over the past five years died within 30 kilometres of their homes. These are not tourists unfamiliar with the roads; they are local people travelling roads they use every day. The research also found that regional roads continue to account for the majority of fatalities, despite carrying far fewer vehicles than those in metropolitan Melbourne.

Every pothole that forces a driver to swerve, every broken road edge that catches a tyre and every damaged safety barrier left unrepaired increases the risk that something will go wrong. Between January 2023 and December 2024 Victorian motorists lodged 1709 compensation claims for vehicle damage caused on state-managed roads, yet only 23 of those claims resulted in settlement offers, a success rate of just 1.3 per cent. Even more concerningly, 73 per cent of those claims involved damaged road surfaces and pavement defects. These figures demonstrate that poor road conditions are not isolated incidents; they are affecting thousands of Victorian motorists. Truck drivers and freight operators also pay the price. Victoria’s freight industry depends heavily on our regional highways. Every damaged road surface increases vehicle maintenance costs, tyre wear, suspension damage and fuel compensation. Delivery delays add further costs, and ultimately those costs are passed on to Victorian consumers.

Regional communities feel these impacts more than most. Unlike metropolitan Melbourne, people living in regional Victoria often have no practical alternative to driving. They travel long distances for work, school, medical appointments and everyday services. When roads deteriorate, families pay more, businesses pay more and communities become less connected. The Hume Highway, the Western Highway, the Midland Highway and the Goulburn Valley Highway have all attracted sustained criticism from motorists, freight operators, local councils and community groups. Motorcyclists and cyclists are particularly vulnerable. What might be a bump for a family sedan can be a life-threatening hazard for someone travelling on two wheels. On the Goulburn Valley Highway and Hume Freeway, the Seymour–Shepparton–Euroa corridor, one Shepparton towing company attended 73 pothole-related vehicle call-outs in just one week, compared with fewer than 10 in a normal week. The RACV attended 49 tyre- and wheel-related breakdowns on the same stretch over an 11-day period: 28 on the Goulburn Valley Freeway and 21 on the Hume Freeway.

These are not back roads; they are among Victoria’s most important transport corridors, carrying thousands of vehicles every single day. Yet too often the government’s response has been reactive rather than preventative. We continue to see potholes patched instead of roads rebuilt. Temporary repairs may satisfy a maintenance target, but they do not solve the underlying problem. Many are washed away after heavy rain, only to require another repair weeks later. That is not good asset management. It is a false economy. The government proudly announced that during its 2024–25 maintenance program it repaired more than 211,000 potholes across Victoria. But when hundreds of thousands of potholes require filling year after year, that should not be seen as a measure of success. It is evidence of a road network that is falling behind.

Victorians are noticing. Recent community reporting recorded more than 31,000 complaints about road conditions in Victoria in a single year, a 28 per cent increase on the previous year, with many of the sharpest increases occurring in regional centres, including Shepparton and Mildura. We also know that investment in permanent road improvement works. That is why this motion calls for greater transparency and accountability. Victorians deserve to know the true condition of the state’s road network. They deserve a statewide assessment identifying roads requiring urgent intervention, they deserve publicly reported maintenance targets so dangerous defects are repaired within clear timeframes and they deserve regular reporting showing where maintenance funding is being spent and whether the overall condition of the network is improving or continuing to decline.

Every responsible asset owner knows the condition of their assets. Every responsible government should do the same. Road users contribute through registration, licensing fees and taxes. They have every right to expect roads that are safe to travel on. This motion is about protecting lives. It is about supporting regional economies. It is about reducing costs for motorists, farmers and freight operators. It is about replacing a culture of patching potholes with a culture of rebuilding roads properly. Preventative maintenance is cheaper than emergency reconstruction. Permanent repairs are cheaper than patching the same pothole over and over again. Most importantly, safer roads save lives. I commend this motion to the house.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:10): It gives me pleasure to rise to talk on Ms Tyrrell’s motion in regard to potholes. I thank Ms Tyrrell for bringing this motion to the house and for her interest in these matters, and particularly her interest as a rural and regional MP in rural and regional roads. It gives me pleasure to be able to talk on this, because I have spoken on this previously in the Council, but also to be able to address some of the points in this motion, because unfortunately there is a lot of conflation around what happens when potholes are fixed and the like, and there is actually a lot of information that is publicly available out there on the internet if people just want to search that and have a look at what happens.

I might start with some facts around who owns the road network. Councils own about 90 per cent of the road network and the state government owns only 10 per cent of the network. But of course we have large arterial roads and freeways that are managed by us. Just for information purposes, under the Road Management Act 2004, the Department of Transport and Planning publish statutory road management plans for freeways and arterial roads. So there are road management plans available for roads, and these plans define official intervention levels, which are typically potholes exceeding 50 millimetres in depth and/or 300 millimetres in diameter, and then set response targets based on a road hierarchy and risk. What is important to note about that approach is that this is actually undertaken by people who are road engineers and who know what they are talking about, not keyboard warriors or people like us here, politicians, who want to rage about things. These are experts who look at this stuff every day and are trained in this stuff.

Basically, the hierarchy response times are by road type and urgency. So if there is a severe or immediate safety hazard, a target is 24 to 48 hours or immediate attendance for major freeway arterial hazards. That is routinely upheld. So then the action is that emergency maintenance crews are dispatched to inspect and implement immediate safety controls. This includes placing warning signs, barriers or speed reductions and applying temporary cold mix asphalt patches to make the road safe again, and I will talk about why patching happens in a minute. Major urgent repairs on state roads can be reported 24/7 via the VicRoads hazard line 13 11 70. So it does not matter what time of day it is, you can ring if it is an urgent or really dangerous pothole. State-managed arterial roads and freeways have two to five business days for initial inspection and temporary patching after a report is lodged. Again, this is not an urgent one, this is something that might be smaller.

Then there are permanent fixes, and this is important for people to understand, because I hear a lot of talk about, ‘Oh, you’re just patching it up and you don’t really care.’ That is incorrect. What happens is that temporary patches are followed up with permanent resurfacing or pavement rehabilitation during seasonal maintenance programs, which are primarily run between September and May. ‘Why is it only done between September and May?’ I hear you ask the question. Because if you are patching roads when it is wet, it is going to fail, okay? And it is also about the temperature of the surface of the road. Again, between September and May there are warmer ground temperatures, which allow hot mix asphalt to cure properly, and if it does not cure properly, it fails. So there are plans about this.

Let us talk about council-managed –

Bev McArthur interjected.

Sonja TERPSTRA: I know you do not like facts, and that is the problem: you do not like the facts. Let us talk about council-managed municipal roads. For high-volume collector roads, councils have two to five business days to repair them and make them safe once a pothole exceeds the intervention. For local residential streets – in fact I drove over a road today that was a Banyule council road and it was probably one of the worst roads I had ever experienced. But funnily enough in regard to that road, it is the residents who do not want it resealed, because they do not like traffic going down it, so they are quite happy to have it full of potholes, might I add. So not everyone is on board with your pothole thing; they actually like it full of potholes.

Members interjecting.

Sonja TERPSTRA: Yes, actually it is. Banyule council have consulted with the residents, and they have just said no. They have said they do not want it resurfaced. Unsealed rural roads managed by scheduled grading cycles take typically four to 12 weeks. So it is wrong, Ms Tyrrell and others, to say that there are no plans to keep our roads safe. That is wrong, because there are road management plans. Again, I urge you and others to go and take the time to look at the department of transport and look at all of these things, because all of these things are publicly available.

I just want to talk about the government’s investments. There is some other good news that I just want to talk about for one second. I am a motorcyclist. I ride a motorbike. When I am on a motorbike, I do not have any music on, I do not have the distractions of phones, so I am focused 100 per cent on the road and the traffic around me. What I can say is that when I am riding I am watching out for anything, whether it is a pothole or lifted pavement; whatever it is. I am focusing on that, and of course I drive to the conditions of the road. As part of my job in this place, I am the chair of the motorcycle community engagement panel, and we get regular briefings on motorcycle accidents or deaths. I can say that in all of those reports there is next to none indicated for death. For example, crash statistics and primary attribution is what you are talking about. So what is it if there is a crash? According to road trauma studies on single-vehicle motorcycle crashes – there could be another vehicle involved, there could be lots of things involved, but this is when it is a single-vehicle crash – road surface defects, potholes and loose gravel are cited as contributing factors, not sole factors, potentially in 10 to 15 per cent of serious motorcycle and bicycle incidents. The data covers both of those modes of transport. Then it talks about the primary contributing factor being roughly 2 to 5 per cent of total police-reported crashes across vehicles and motorcycles. So thankfully we see that the condition of roads is a very low contributing factor. But I understand very clearly that some people get frustrated that when driving on roads there are lots of potholes. I was driving along Manningham Road the other day, and there were no potholes, but there were tree roots lifting the pavement. It was like I was going on a roller-coaster. There are other things that frustrate. It is not just potholes that are a thing.

But nevertheless I want to indicate clearly to you, Ms Tyrrell, and to others who may be watching this at home that the department does have road management plans. Regular inspection of our roads is undertaken, and in the 2025–26 budget and in this budget we have announced $1 billion towards road maintenance funding. I will just go through and talk about some of the delivery performance achieved from the 2025–26 budget and our network conditions across regional Victoria: 97.3 per cent of regional roads are meeting the standard; 95 per cent are meeting the roughness standard; 97.9 per cent are meeting cracking standards; and 99.6 per cent of regional bridges are assessed as acceptable for legal road vehicles. So again, there are standards that are put in place by road engineers and experts. They regularly inspect our road network, and they are indicating that 97.3 per cent of regional roads are meeting the standards. It is not a static thing. I have heard those opposite, the Liberals, say, ‘Oh, we’re going to fix potholes forever.’ You cannot fix potholes forever, because our roads actually have about a million-plus trips every single day by people, whether it is by car, motorcycle, truck or the like. Our roads get used each and every day, not just once or twice, but a million trips a day. So our roads require ongoing maintenance and upkeep. That is why our government invested $653 million over two years in the 2020–21 state budget just in resurfacing roads across the state. Then, as I said, we have announced we are going to invest $1 billion towards maintaining and improving our road network, and 70 per cent of that is actually going to rural and regional roads.

We are not in denial over here about the state of our roads. There are lots of trucks, there are lots of trips, and we have had very heavy rain events that have occurred recently. As Ms Tyrrell talked about earlier, when road surfaces crack, water gets through those cracks and the constant usage undermines the surface soil underneath the asphalt and the hot mix, and that is how potholes form. Might I say in regard to the infamous Nar Nar Goon pothole incident, that is exactly what happened. Because there was a really heavy rain event, that pothole opened really quickly, and that is why people did not see it and they ran into it. But thankfully, our road crews were out there that night and actually put signs around it indicating there was a hazard, and it was repaired that night with a temporary fix and then later repaired quickly. So again, I thank all of our road crews, who are doing fantastic work across the network in repairing our roads and keeping them safe.

 Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (11:20): I am of course happy to stand and support this motion. I know there has been a lot of talk in the last 24 hours about new directions, but it is pretty hard to tell someone that you are going in a new direction when you have just done a hub cap and you are sitting on the side of the road because you are not going anywhere. That is the experience of many people on our road network that experience it day in, day out. I have seen it on many country roads in particular.

Ms Terpstra, I do have great respect for you, but one of the things that you said was that people are not ‘on board with your pothole thing’, and you said that of us.

Sonja Terpstra interjected.

Joe McCRACKEN: Our pothole thing, which means we have obviously been raising it as a significant issue. You are saying that people are not on board with it. I have got to say that I completely disagree with that. It is one of the biggest issues that gets raised with me every single day I go out and talk to constituents. It is one of the most common issues that comes up. It might be different in your electorate in metro Melbourne, but it is certainly a huge issue in my electorate of Western Victoria. I would never, ever seek to downplay for anyone in this place that roads are a huge issue.

Point (1) of this motion says that the state’s road network is fundamental to safety, economic prosperity and connected communities, especially I would say across regional Victoria, because we do not have tram stops every couple of hundred metres. We do not have the public transport system that many others across the state enjoy. We do rely on roads. To have this motion acknowledge that fact is fundamental to the lived experience that many regional Victorians face every single day because there is no option other than to use a public road. That is the only option that exists – full stop. There is nothing else – no trams, no trains, nothing – just the ability to use a road. So roads are fundamentally important to the experience of country people and how they get around.

Point (2) of this motion acknowledges the fact that many people in the Victorian community rely on roads, including for employment, education, health care, freight transport, tourism and emergency services. Just think about all the commuters that use the state’s roads. Think about the school buses or the parents during morning drop-off or afternoon pick-up. Think about the billions of dollars in food, fibre and produce that flow from country Victoria every single day and the transport network across the state. Think about all the freight that gets moved across the state every single day. Think about tourism. Most interstate travellers get to Victoria and think, ‘Jeez, what happened here?’ That is how bad our roads are in comparison to the rest of the country. Think about our emergency services workers – our firies, our ambos, our police officers, the SES, all our wonderful volunteers. Every emergency services worker has to use our crumbling road network, but their job is made that much more challenging when they are not only turning up to an incredibly difficult situation but they have got to consider their own safety very carefully when they are trying to navigate roads on the state’s broken road network.

Point (3) of this motion talks about the deteriorating conditions of the state-managed road network across Victoria, and surely those opposite cannot argue that that is not the case. Point (3)(c) in the motion is critical here because it does not just talk about the fact that the roads are in incredibly poor condition, but it talks about the impact, the increase in the likelihood of crashes, creating significant hazards for motorcyclists and cyclists, increasing the risk of tyre failure and vehicle damage, which is not just in the hundreds of dollars; it can be in the thousands. It places emergency services personnel at risk and increases the cost of freight, primarily due to delays and damage caused by road conditions to freight vehicles. That is the real impact and that is the cost to Victorians, costs that they incur every single day, every single week, every single month. It is a cost that we on this side think is one that they should not have to bear.

Point (4) of this motion is excellent, and it expresses concern for the short-term pothole repairs that have failed to provide any lasting improvements, resulting in overall increased costs. I would actually go one step further and say that it does not just result in overall increased costs in the dollar sense but also increases the safety risks to all road users. The government’s solution to this has been incredibly lacklustre. Just last week I was driving on the Western Highway not too far from Ballarat, and I saw one of those electronic signs right on the side of the road saying that there was storm damage that had impacted the roads. I can tell you I am not a meteorologist, but I do live in Ballarat and there had been no storm there in recent times. For the department to get up there and say that there had been storm damage is a slap in the face to every single person that drives the Western Highway every day. It reeks of gaslighting. It reeks of a government that will not take responsibility for problems. They have been in power for nearly 12 years and will not even acknowledge that pure, simple fact. Blame it on storms? No, no, no. Take responsibility for a problem that has been created by you.

Point (5) condemns the government. We know the government love to talk about the money that they put into roads, but it clearly is not hitting the mark. You can spend all the money you want, but it does not guarantee that you get value for money. But how can you get value for money when you do not know how to manage money? That has been one of the defining characteristics of this Labor government. In fact even the new Premier yesterday said in his press release that Victorians are concerned with how government money is spent. If he is saying that, why won’t those opposite acknowledge that fact? If you cannot manage money, you cannot manage major projects and you cannot manage roads – barely managing themselves over there. It is a totally inward focus and not acknowledging the very real concerns that many people have on Victoria’s road network.

Point (6) of this motion calls on the government to establish a statewide road condition assessment which identifies roads requiring urgent intervention, prioritise permanent surface reconstruction, establish publicly reported maintenance and performance targets – jeez, that suspiciously sounds like accountability – and provide regular public reporting on the condition of Victoria’s arterial road network and maintenance expenditure. Again, all this talk about accountability must be making other people quite nervous in this place.

I think Victorians know that thanks to Labor, our roads are completely ruined. We used to be the envy of the nation, but now Victoria is the laughing-stock – on a number of fronts, but roads is certainly one. And that is Labor’s legacy. You have systematically dismantled anything resembling a world-class road network and instead let corruption run rife on Big Build projects that are supposed to build our roads, not build the wealth of those opposite’s friends. One of those Big Build projects is in my electorate. It is near Ararat. It is the Buangor to Ararat Western Highway upgrade, and goodness knows what has gone on there. That should be the subject of a royal commission as well. But like many other Big Build subjects, we have not really got clear answers on that. It is like those opposite have had a road to Damascus moment. They think, ‘Oh, yes, maybe we should have a royal commission now because the polling says we should.’ It is just amazing actually that you can do a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Now you supposedly support it even though weeks ago you were saying it should not happen. It is ridiculous. But we will see if there really is a true commitment to getting to the bottom of things when we see the release of the terms of reference.

I fully support this motion, and I thank Ms Tyrrell for bringing it to the chamber. I hope we can all get behind it, because I am sure we can all agree that roads in Victoria need a hell of a lot of work. We on this side at least have a plan to fix them.

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (11:29): There is no doubt that the road network in Victoria is vital for regional Victorians, and it is in a pretty poor state. As a regional MP who spends a lot of time on our roads, I can attest to the challenges of navigating pothole-ridden roads for hours on end. It is stressful, it causes damage to cars and it is, frankly, really dangerous. This is not just anecdotal. Analysis of Snap Send Solve reports showed a 28 per cent increase in pothole reports year on year in Victoria, with the Warrnambool area recording a staggering 149 per cent increase. We have heard about how a simple patch job is often not enough to solve the problem. What we need is a lasting solution that really gets down to the substrate of the road and fixes the underlying problem. That is true in a literal sense, but it is a perfect metaphor too. We need to understand the systemic underlying issues that are causing our roads to deteriorate like this if we want to really solve the problems rather than just continually patching things up.

Transport is supply led: you reap what you sow. If you lean into expanding the road network, you encourage more people to drive, but if you invest in railways, you encourage more of our transport task to go by rail. This is true for passengers just as it is for freight. Let us be clear about what ultimately causes the damage we see on our roads: it is the wear and tear caused by vehicles travelling on them. The more vehicles and the heavier they are, the more damage is done. When you double the weight of a vehicle it increases the road damage by 16 times, so the bigger American-style utes we are seeing increasingly on our roads and an increase in trucks translates exponentially to more road damage.

What we face today is in large part the legacy of decades of underinvestment in our regional railways. For about 50 years Labor and Liberal governments charged ahead with building huge motorways while starving Victoria’s regional railways of funding. That is a recipe for fewer people on trains and more cars on the road, less freight on the rails and more trucks on the road, both of which are a recipe for more damage to the road surface. We will always need some freight on trucks, and people will always need to drive for some trips, but the proportions matter. The more we can help freight and passengers shift to rail, the more we protect our roads for those who really need them.

There has been a shift in the 21st century with renewed investment in regional passenger rail, and it has been a huge success, with V/Line passenger numbers quadrupling since 2004. But there is a long way to go in catching up on 50 lost years – 50 years when our population grew but our railways did not. There are a lot of trips that regional Victorians should be able to take by train that they still cannot. There are more than 50,000 people in the Mildura area, but they have no passenger rail. A good 300,000 people live in Geelong, Ballarat or the communities in between, but there is no passenger rail linking them. Stawell and Horsham have a combined population over 20,000, but they have to make do with the privately run Overland twice a week. In all these cases the tracks exist but V/Line does not run passenger trains on them. Even in the places that do have rail services, the services are so unreliable that anyone needing to be anywhere on time currently thinks twice about catching the train. We created a V/Line bingo card in my office because of the number of times that a service was cancelled, too crowded, delayed or terminated inexplicably at a station before you had reached your destination. How many car trips could be taken off the road if passenger rail was a viable option for these trips? How much damage to our roads could be avoided if they did?

Ms Tyrrell’s motion notes the safety implications of a broken road network. Fatigue is another big factor, particularly with the long distances involved in some regional trips. How many lives could be saved if more regional Victorians could get on the train for part or all of their long-distance trips and relax, even have a nap, get some work done, while the train takes the strain? When it comes to freight, the situation is even more dire. Passenger rail’s renaissance in the last 20 years has not extended to freight. Funding was provided for the Murray Basin rail project to upgrade and standardise freight railways in the state’s north-west commencing in 2016, but it proved more expensive than expected, and when the money ran out halfway through the project the government put it in the too-hard basket and descoped the later stages. With the project abandoned half finished, freight trains from Mildura have to divert 128 kilometres out of their way to get to port, leaving them worse off than before the project began.

This never happens for motorways in Melbourne. When the West Gate Tunnel’s price tag blew out by $3.3 billion, the government kept charging ahead. When North East Link’s cost blew out from $10 billion to $16 billion to $26 billion, the government kept charging ahead. It seems there is no price too high to pay for these huge, city-destroying motorways, but there is never enough money for rail freight. This does not mean that you do not need to invest in roads. There will always be a need for regional people to drive their cars to get around and for trucks to move our freight, and the roads they drive on should be maintained to a high standard; the big problem is the irrational insistence on building these new urban motorways. Projects like the West Gate Tunnel and the North East Link take up a ridiculous amount of the transport budget, and they are simply the wrong tool for the job. The $26 billion price tag of the North East Link could fund a lot of regional road maintenance and a lot of regional rail upgrades to address the systemic imbalance that puts those roads under so much pressure.

Fixing regional roads is not simply a matter of filling the potholes faster. It is a bit like health care: if you want to make any long-term difference, you have to try and prevent it happening in the first place. What we need is a system reform so that we can reduce the number of potholes and ideally give people more options that get them off the roads altogether. We need an integrated transport plan that looks at all of the pieces of our transport system and critically backs this up with funding. Until that happens, unfortunately I am pretty sure dodging potholes will be a firm feature of my trips and those of many others around regional Victoria, and I think we deserve better.

 Sheena WATT (Northern Metropolitan) (11:36): Thank you very much for the opportunity to rise today and make a contribution on this motion regarding our state’s road network. I want to start by acknowledging something that we all fundamentally agree on: our road network is absolutely vital. We know that whether you live right here in the heart of Melbourne or out in the beautiful corners of regional and rural Victoria, a safe and reliable road network is what connects you to everything that matters. It connects people to their jobs, to education, to health care and to the people they love. It is the absolute lifeblood of our freight operators, the backbone of our tourism industry and a critical path for our emergency services, so there is no dispute about the importance of our roads.

What I do dispute, however, is the narrative that is embedded in this motion that somehow ignores the reality of the challenges we have faced and the sheer scale of the work our government is doing right now to rebuild and strengthen our network. Over the last few years Victoria has experienced some of the wettest periods in our recorded history. We have seen record rainfall impact almost every single part of the state. We endured devastating widespread flood events in October 2022 – for which there was an inquiry that I sat on during this term of government – and then again more recently in December 2023 and January 2024. The extreme weather did not just wash away the top layer of bitumen, it actually caused some structural damage deep underneath the surface of our roads. When you look at the level of damage, you cannot quickly patch a pothole and walk away; you have to rebuild and strengthen those roads from the ground up so they are able to handle our rapidly growing population and the massive increase in our freight task. That is why in this year’s state budget our government has committed more than $1 billion towards maintaining and improving Victoria’s road network. This is the largest single-year investment in road maintenance ever delivered in this state. It is a massive historical blitz designed to get our roads back to the standard that Victorians expect and deserve.

Despite the enormous challenges thrown at us by the weather, our delivery record is incredibly strong. In 2025–26 the Department of Transport and Planning successfully delivered 100 per cent of its planned regional road maintenance program within the agreed timelines. But they did not just meet the targets, they absolutely smashed them. We aimed to resurface or rehabilitate just over 2.7 million square metres of regional roads, and our crew actually delivered almost 3.8 million square metres; that is more than 40 per cent above our planned levels. We also set a target of 70,000 square metres for major patching activity, but we completed around 181,000 square metres. Right now across regional Victoria 97.3 per cent of roads are meeting running standards, 95 per cent are meeting roughness standards, nearly 98 per cent are meeting cracking standards and practically every single regional bridge – 99.6 per cent – is assessed as accessible for legal road vehicles. These outcomes do not happen by accident; they are the result of a maintenance program guided by hard work, rigorous network inspections, proper engineering assessments and real feedback from local communities.

We invest where the need is greatest and where it delivers the most benefit for the people using those roads every single day. But our commitment goes beyond maintenance: we are also investing heavily in targeted capital upgrades to make our network safer and more efficient. The budget announced a $102.6 million investment for 26 vital road projects right across the state, including 15 projects across metropolitan Melbourne and 11 specific high-priority projects across regional Victoria. That includes the allocation of $73.4 million under the regional roads upgrade program, where we are working alongside the federal government to deliver and develop projects that will make a tangible difference to regional communities.

Let me talk about what that looks like in practice, because these are projects that locals have been calling for, and we are delivering them in northern Victoria. We are making a massive intersection upgrade at the Calder Highway in Maiden Gully Road. Anyone who knows that road and knows that area will know that it is absolutely booming. The population is sitting at around 7500 right now, but there is a lot of development going on and it is expected to hit 10,000 in the next 10 years. That is indeed a very large growth, and right now that intersection is beyond capacity, it is dangerous and there have been two crashes in the last five years. This upgrade will make it safer and easier for people to access the Maiden Gully activity centre and the growing residential centres and areas to the west.

In northern Victoria we are funding the project for the vital overtaking lane on the Strzelecki Highway between Mirboo North and Leongatha at Boorool. This is such a critical north–south link for freight and for the local communities in South Gippsland and Latrobe, one that I know a member for Eastern Victoria over on this side has some familiarity with. It is a hilly, a windy and a tough spot to find somewhere to overtake. Combined with growing traffic, this has led to some really terrible outcomes, including two serious injuries and nine minor injuries recently, and because full road widening is just not feasible there, an overtaking lane is the smartest, most effective way to improve travel times and stop people from taking some really dangerous risks.

Over in eastern Victoria of course we are moving ahead with the alternative freight route stage 2 project in Leongatha. Right now we have got the heavy freight trucks that have had to rumble right through the middle of the township, and it creates some bottlenecks, ruins the local amenity and is incredibly dangerous. To that end we have seen 48 near misses recorded at the intersection of the Bass Highway and South Gippsland Highway between 2020 and 2025. By developing an alternative route, we can get those heavy trucks out of the town centre, making Leongatha safer for locals and far better for freight operators. We are also delivering brand new traffic signals at the intersection of Princes Highway East, Davey Drive and Waterloo Road in Trafalgar. This is in the heart of Trafalgar, but the current layout makes it so difficult for local businesses and services to be safely accessed. With more people moving to the area and more tourists passing through, the safety risks are escalating. Tragically there have been seven casualty crashes there over the last five years, and we are stepping in to fix it, fully integrating the new signals with the nearby railway level crossing. This project, which we are delivering through Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority Roads with proposed 50 per cent Commonwealth funding, will be an absolute game changer for the livability of Trafalgar.

Back up to northern Victoria again, we are funding the project development to rehabilitate and upgrade the historic Tooleybuc Bridge over the Murray River. That is the single-lane timber bridge that dates back to 1925 – and I think I was actually on that over the break – and it has served us well but has safety and capacity risks that need to be urgently addressed. Upgrading that crossing is vital for keeping our regional connections strong and supporting local agricultural and tourism industries that rely on access between Victoria and New South Wales.

In western Victoria we are taking decisive action on safety at the intersection in Lubeck. There are some really tragic crashes that have happened there, including a really heartbreaking fatality. I could go on to list all of the upgrades that we are taking, but let me just discuss one. I have got seven examples of projects that we are about to do and have funded and are working with the Commonwealth to deliver. With all of these projects, some that I have talked about and some that I know others in this place will talk about, what they demonstrate is our $1 billion maintenance blitz and that we are not just talking about regional upgrades but absolutely funding them, fixing them and upgrading them. There is more work to be done, there is no doubt about it, especially as we continue to recover from the historic floods and deal with the growing population.

To suggest that we are mismanaging the network or failing to prioritise maintenance is simply incorrect. We are making the largest investment in the history of this state. We are exceeding our delivery targets, and we are methodically working through the evidence-based upgrades that regional Victorians actually need. We are getting on with the job of rebuilding our roads so that they are stronger, safer and ready for the future. I know that I live between the tram tracks, but I do spend a lot of my time out there on our regional roads, particularly over this last summer as I supported communities recovering from the bushfires. I do know just how much these upgrades are necessary, and so can I finish by paying my respects to all the road workers who are doing an extraordinary job in some really troubling circumstances, and I encourage everybody to drive safely around those workers because they absolutely deserve it. They are doing a job that serves many, many Victorians. In fact all of us that have the benefit of living, working or eating in this state need safe roads, and so please be careful around our road workers.

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:46): Today I rise to support Ms Tyrrell’s motion, which rightly points out that Victoria’s road network is fundamental to safety, economic prosperity and connectivity, and that Victoria’s roads are failing Victoria’s people at the moment. I want to start by saying from the outset that a Liberal and National government will invest $5 billion into repairing Victoria’s roads and eliminating 1 million potholes and re-establish a proper, planned system of preventative road maintenance. This is a 25 per cent increase on the current spending, and we are going to invest that money over a four-year period. We are going to establish Better Roads Victoria, a standalone division of the Department of Transport and Planning, to rebuild the technical and engineering expertise that has been lost. We are going to restore that, and we are going to boost roadside maintenance, such as grass slashing, graffiti removal and drain clearage, which are really ruining our roads, making them look terrible and making them less safe. We will lift departmental and contractor accountability through a review of construction standards and maintenance contracts. That is one that I really want to talk about later on, because Victorians should be getting the roads that they deserve. They should be able to drive on a road that is not littered with potholes, but the maintenance of that road should not cut off access to businesses for years. The government should be held to the same standard when building roads or when fixing roads that a local business would be. We do not see that happen as it is, and this is why we are going to do it.

I am just going to read some quotes from Jess Wilson and then Danny O’Brien. Jess said:

While $15 billion has been lost to corruption on the Big Build, our roads are littered with dangerous potholes that are causing untold damage to vehicles – leaving motorists thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Drivers shouldn’t be the ones footing the bill for blown tyres, cracked rims and worse because –

the Allan Labor government, but Ben Carroll has been side by side in each of these, so I will just say the Labor government –

… cannot get the basics right.

Danny O’Brien said this:

Roads have been falling apart all across Victoria and Victorians are fed-up with half-hearted patch up jobs that quickly fall apart. The Liberals and Nationals will finally address the roads crisis …

so that Victorians will not have to put up with this anymore. I am so thankful for this, because in 2026 in a place like Victoria, people should not have to play ‘dodge the pothole’.

I want to read in some local media that shows what people have to put up with. This one was from Mornington Peninsula News on 12 June, and the headline was ‘Nepean highway funds reallocated’:

The cost of planned upgrades to the Nepean Highway has been revised, with $15 million promised to the project …

This is another issue I have: if you promise it, deliver it. Do not promise something then pull it out and say, ‘Tricked you. You voted for us, but we’re actually not going to use it for that.’ But anyway:

THE cost of planned upgrades to the Nepean Highway has been revised, with $15 million promised to the project now expected to be spent elsewhere.

$15 million of a promised $50 million for upgrades to the Nepean Highway and Overton Road intersection is set to be diverted to other Victorian roads. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised the money for the Nepean Highway/Overton Road project during the 2025 election campaign.

That was last year that the Albanese Labor government promised that money. People voted accordingly, and now he has turned around and ripped it from them. It is not the first time that this has happened in my region, by the way. The sealing the hills project in the Emerald area had amazing funding secured by Aaron Violi and Jason Wood, only for Albo to take that money out too. I have just got an email here from somebody in that area. Clare Fitzmaurice and I went with the Cockatoo 21st Century Roads Action Group recently, who are the people that are advocating in this area to have that money restored. He said:

I appreciate your time to drive around Cockatoo, Emerald and Avonsleigh unsealed roads today. I hope it gave you some insight into what the residents need to endure.

What we saw there was beautiful houses that have been built up and these unsealed roads that are so unsafe that you have to pull over to one side if a car is coming the other way, and it is just not acceptable. I want to read out a couple of other things that I raised in the Monbulk region, which still have not had attention from the minister. A couple of years ago I raised an adjournment for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. The action that I sought was that the Department of Transport and Planning urgently inspect the intersection of Monbulk Road and Perrins Creek Road in Kallista to identify improvements for motorists and pedestrians. This is still an issue that is ongoing and this is what people from the region there say. I do not live there, I live in East Gippsland, and I am so aware of these roads because people continually write to me about them, yet nothing is done. It says:

Drivers make unsafe, illegal U-turns, including left into Monbulk Road and right into Perrins Creek Road at this intersection with Perrins Creek Road.

Residents have raised serious safety concerns. They are worried that there is soon going to be a death there. They said:

At the top of the intersection, there is not enough space for pedestrians, and this forces people to have to walk on this dangerous stretch of road while cars are speeding by. That should not happen at an intersection used by local families, older residents and some of the 5.5 million visitors to Dandenong Ranges.

They said:

The people of Kallista and the Dandenong Ranges deserve basic road safety. They should not have to wait for another tragic accident to happen there.

I am going to read another one that has been raised, not just by me but by many people on the crossbench and many people on this side. This one was asked years ago first, then it was asked again, and then it has been asked again. The minister for road safety did go down to this one to meet with the Lang Lang community group, but the meeting had to be put off because they were waiting for somebody and, sadly, there was a fatality on the road while they were waiting for this meeting. Anyway, it said:

Lang Lang residents have called for the truck bypass for years, but again, the Labor government has refused to act on their concerns. And despite ongoing near misses from heavy vehicles travelling through the township’s main street, instead, the state government used its budget to announce a new extractive resource area for Lang Lang, which would make more sandmines in this area, overshadowing people’s land rights and still ignoring the fact that about 50 trucks pass through this main township area per hour.

Fifty trucks per hour. I have stood there when little kids have been waiting with their little backpacks, or their big backpacks, for the lights to change as these huge trucks have sped past on these really dangerous roads. And I tell you what, Victorians deserve better.

What I do want to say as well on this is that we will make sure that these roadworks are done in a timely manner, because people deserve the infrastructure that is required for growing communities. They all pay their taxes, particularly in regional areas. Of their taxes, they get about a 12 per cent investment back in infrastructure, but they have the same crushing burden as everyone else. In fact they will have a greater burden when those exemptions from the emergency services levy are lifted and it is again charged on the value of farming land, causing more of these country people to go broke. Regardless there have been businesses that have gone broke because of the roadworks that have continued to cut off access to businesses, like in Bald Hill Road where 1 kilometre of road has cut off business access for two years. I do not know if that would ever be acceptable in a private business setting. One stretch of road, if it was a private business and not the government, would they get away with that?

I have got about 30 seconds left, so I will close with this story. The other day I was getting signatures for the Bald Hill Road petition that I tabled yesterday down in Officer. The owner of the Officer Bakehouse came up to me and said, ‘You do know that Bald Hill isn’t the only area that is experiencing this?’ Sadly, I said, ‘Yeah, I do know, but what’s your story?’ Her husband and her daughter have run this business successfully for years. In her words, it has never recovered from the government’s ongoing roadworks, which caused people to not be able to get there and then after years of it to change their habits. I commend this motion to the house.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:56): When I was a kid I used to play this game – I am sure many of you in here played it – called SimCity. One of the things in SimCity – it was quite advanced for its time – is it allows you to manage city budgets. On one side you get your money through taxation, fines and fees and selling bonds and on the other side you have to spend it on things like police, ambulance and roads. You have the ability to manage that budget. It is just like a real budget. One of the things that SimCity did not take into account was money that was spent and did not actually have any effect, like through corruption or waste and this sort of thing. But leaving that to one side for a minute, one of the interesting things that SimCity did was that when you tried to reduce the road budget, unlike any other budget that you tried to reduce, it popped up this warning on the screen and said, ‘If you reduce the road budget, in the short term you may save some money but over the longer term you will pay big time.’ It warned you against doing that. In fact one of the bravest things that you could do in SimCity was to reduce the roads budget.

Katherine Copsey interjected.

David LIMBRICK: You could have rail instead in SimCity. Yes, the Greens like rail. You could also have fusion reactors in SimCity, which do not exist. Nevertheless I have been talking to many constituents in the south-east at lots of different events, and roads are not the number one issue – in fact the number one issue is crime at the moment – but certainly roads are well up there.

I know many people talk about the poor state of regional roads. That is true; I am not disputing that. But it is not just regional roads at all. If you drive down Warrigal Road, you will just about wreck your suspension. I got informed by people on social media about the detour for the Ballarto Road roadworks that were happening, so one of my staff members and I went for a drive down there, and we ended up making a video about it. The road was so rough that I decided that the postapocalyptic soundtrack from the movie 28 Days was the most appropriate thing. But as was pointed out to me by constituents, I had driven down the road the day after it had been graded. They showed me pictures of the day before it had been graded, and one of those pictures had a pothole so deep that it would have just about killed someone. One of the local residents had put a brick and a piece of wood over the pothole to try and smooth the surface for any cars or trucks – there are lots of trucks going down that road. It is a nightmarish scenario.

I went for a drive down Glasscocks Road in Lyndhurst. The road itself is in terrible condition, but alongside the road is rubbish like you have never seen. The entire area has been turned into a landfill. We will be hearing more about unregulated landfills in question time I believe. Nevertheless the government needs to do something about the roads. I know they are talking. They are saying that they are going to act. But I urge the government to not just spend money and make announcements on how they are going to spend money but actually make the money have effect and not get wasted, because we know for a fact that so much of the money that is being spent by the government in these packages that they always announce just gets wasted. Let us not waste it. Let us make it count.

Business interrupted pursuant to sessional orders.