Wednesday, 29 July 2026

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (18:51): (2638) I rise to raise a very important matter for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety regarding the urgent need to duplicate Donnybrook Road and finally deliver the infrastructure in one of Victoria’s fastest growing communities that they have been waiting way too long to receive. Residents in Donnybrook and Kalkallo and surrounding suburbs are paying the price for this Andrews–Allan–Carroll government’s over a decade of failure. They have failed to keep pace with growth. Every day around 35,000 vehicles use Donnybrook Road despite the road being designed to safely carry only around 20,000 vehicles. The result of this is a daily traffic nightmare for many, many families, particularly those where it takes over 40 minutes just to get out of their own housing estate. That is a story I hear every day from local residents. This is time taken away from families, work and everyday life because the government has failed to provide the infrastructure for growing communities.

As I have mentioned in this place before, it was the previous Liberal and Nationals government that duplicated the Mickleham side of Donnybrook Road via a developer contribution plan. Instead of taking all the developer taxes and sending them into Spring Street where they sit in a bank account for over two years collecting interest while construction costs rise by about 20 per cent, we did a developer contribution plan with the developer to write off that contribution so they could build the infrastructure straightaway, which is usually value for money because you do not get the wedding cake tax of dealing with government directly. That is acknowledgement of the Liberal government’s ability to work with the private sector, whereas the Kalkallo and Donnybrook side of Donnybrook Road is kind of the Labor side.

I was pleased, as I have stated, to be out at Donnybrook station with the Leader of the Opposition Jess Wilson, the Leader of the Nationals Danny O’Brien, the candidate for Northern Victoria Steve Brooks, my colleague Wendy Lovell and our fantastic candidate for Yan Yean Amanda Dow to announce that the Liberals and Nationals will commit $524 million to duplicate the entirety of Donnybrook Road from Epping Road in Woodstock to Dwyer Street in Kalkallo, including building a second bridge over the Hume. The action I seek from the minister is to match that commitment, because I could not believe the member for Yan Yean refused to match that commitment, which is a great disappointment for those communities. They need a fresh start, and the only way they will get that is to vote for Amanda Dow.