Tuesday, 15 October 2019

 Ms PULFORD (Western Victoria—Minister for Roads, Minister for Road Safety and the TAC, Minister for Fishing and Boating) (12:38): I recently joined the Premier and the member for Essendon, Danny Pearson, at Woodland Street in Strathmore to announce the commencement of road maintenance season. It is going to be a bumper season off the back of some very fine road maintenance weather and a massive $870 million government investment into smoother and safer roads.

Mr Davis: Don’t you do it all year?

Ms PULFORD: It is actually quite seasonal work.

Mr Davis: Is it?

Ms PULFORD: It is, yes. It is much more effective when the weather is right.

Mr Davis interjected.

Ms PULFORD: There is some element of that that is year-round, but overwhelmingly the maintenance program is rolled out between October and May.

Mr Davis interjected.

Ms PULFORD: Thank you for the Dorothy Dixer. I thought we had got rid of those, Mr Davis. We are upgrading more than 1800 kilometres of road and repairing 150 000 potholes and will trim more than 30 000 kilometres of roadside vegetation right across Victoria. Most of this work is occurring in regional Victoria. Fifteen hundred kilometres of regional roads will be repaired, rebuilt and resurfaced, including key roads such as the Princes Highway in Gippsland, the Hume Highway near Winton and the Robinvale-Sea Lake Road at Manangatang.

The blitz is also creating jobs—lots of them. On any given night during this blitz about 100 workers will be fixing roads across Melbourne, while there will be 1100 construction jobs created in the regions as part of this work. Most importantly, these are good, well-paying jobs. At the blitz announcement I met a couple of Mernda gentlemen, the Silman brothers, whose crew were carrying out the roadworks. Their business is going gangbusters. They have more than doubled the size of their crew in the last nine months, thanks in large part to the work they are carrying out in partnership with our government. From fixing potholes, to the biggest projects the state has ever seen, we are building a better transport network for all Victorians.