Wednesday, 23 September 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (10:48): I move:

That this house notes:

(1)   that the Auditor-General’s report titled Maintaining State Roads found that ‘the overall condition of Victoria’s state roads is deteriorating’, with 48 per cent of state roads in poor or very poor condition in 2024, up from 39 per cent in 2021;

(2)   the Auditor-General’s finding that Victoria’s road maintenance backlog is large and growing, funding is insufficient, the Department of Transport and Planning has no meaningful targets and limited assurance over the quality of works, and one in eight inspected works were defective and needed rework;

(3)   that the Honourable Ben Carroll MP served as Minister for Roads and Road Safety from June 2020 to December 2022, during which time road asset management funding fell from $953.8 million in 2020–‍21 to $760.1 million in 2021–22;

and calls on the government to publish road condition, backlog and repair data and regional maintenance allocations and timetables and explain how it will arrest the deterioration of roads identified by the Auditor-General.

I could not think of a more fitting general business motion to move on this last non-government business day of the 60th Parliament. Roads and road safety is a subject that my community raises with me and my colleagues year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day. Over eight years I have mentioned roads more than 2100 times across 329 contributions in this place. I take no pride in that number; it is a measure of how long the road crisis has gone unaddressed. I spent over two years as the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Road Safety, where I prosecuted the case against wire rope barriers and have since been proven right as they disintegrate on every road. I was deputy chair of the inquiry into the increase in Victoria’s road toll and sat on the inquiry into local government funding and services while witnesses across the state rang the warning bells about the shocking state of our road network. I also served on the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee when Tim Pallas, then Treasurer, was asked why Ben Carroll, the then minister, had cut road funding given our roads were no longer filled with potholes but craters. The Treasurer replied:

… potholes that look like craters only occur in Liberal Party propaganda.

Well, who was right, Tim or the opposition? On 9 September the Auditor-General’s office handed down their report into the maintenance of state roads and answered that same question. It was the first audit of its kind since 2017, and it confirmed everything regional Victorians have been saying and everything this government has spent a decade denying. Forty-eight per cent of Victoria’s state roads are in poor or very poor condition. In 2021 it was 39 per cent. Between January last year and June this year the number of identified defects on the network went from 80,000 to more than 225,000, while repairs reached about 180,000. We are falling behind faster than we are catching up. Deferred maintenance now sits at $1.34 billion. Four years ago it was $774 million. The department told the government it needs more than $3 billion a year to maintain these roads properly. It gets $900 million and $1 billion. The department has advised the government that funding is insufficient to maintain or improve the condition of state roads. The department reports that 95.3 per cent of regional roads meet the roughness standard, while its own surveys show 23.31 per cent of regional state roads are poor or very poor for roughness.

What were Labor’s members saying while all this was going on? Member for Western Victoria Ms Ermacora managed 380 contributions in this Parliament without once raising potholes. It took my own constituency question before she raised the subject at all, asking the minister how much of the $352 million investment in road maintenance will benefit constituents in Western Victoria. The Auditor-General has 48 per cent of the network in poor or very poor condition, and the member has to use the Parliament to ask her own colleague, ‘How much will go into my region?’ Her colleague Ms Terpstra, a member for North-Eastern Metropolitan Region, has gone further and told this chamber that some Victorians are quite happy to have roads full of potholes and are not on board with this pothole thing. You would think after being bagged from pillar to post in the media and in this chamber, she would stop defending the indefensible. But I am told she continues to post about it on social media – talk about propaganda. I invite Ms Terpstra to drive the Cobden-Warrnambool Road and ask the people who live along it which of them are happy with potholes. For a decade this government told this Parliament that 95 per cent of regional roads were meeting standard. You needed the Auditor-General to tell you the truth, because your own department had not. The government’s answer was $352 million, announced the week before the report came out. A department that needs $3 billion a year was handed $352 million, once, days before the report dropped.

Let me bring this home to Western Victoria, where our roads have been reduced to goat tracks. The Cobden-Warrnambool Road in Corangamite shire is the worst road in the south-west: 97.6 per cent of it is rated poor or very poor, almost 90 per cent of it is very poor and just 2 per cent of that road is in good condition. Vehicles travel 31.4 million kilometres a year on it. Joe Tyres farms at Naringal and lives on it. He said they have not fixed it at all since 2024 other than filling the occasional pothole, which empties out again within days, and that a B-double lost control 130 metres from his driveway because of a hole in the road. On roads like these you cannot ride a bike, you cannot walk the verge and you take your life in your hands in a car. Ninety-seven per cent of the Penshurst-Port Fairy Road is poor or very poor, and 96 per cent of the Koroit-Port Fairy Road likewise. Across Moyne shire it is 56.1 per cent of the state road network and in Corangamite 55.8 per cent. On the Princes Highway between Geelong and Glenelg there are 115.6 kilometres rated very poor. That highway carries vehicles nearly 1 billion kilometres a year, and 120 kilometres of it needs replacing inside two years. This is not a maintenance problem anymore, it is a network on the brink of collapse.

The RACV’s My Country Road campaign this year drew more than 6000 participants who logged 10,048 requests for road improvements in seven weeks. Road surfaces and potholes were the number one safety concern for 71 per cent of them, up from 64 per cent in 2024. It is getting worse, and people know it. Two of the three most dangerous roads in the state, as nominated by the Victorians who actually drive on them, are in my electorate: the Princes Highway West from Colac to Camperdown and the Princes Highway West from Portland to Port Fairy. Then there is the Henty Highway from Portland to Hamilton and the Midland Highway from Ballarat to Daylesford. They also cite the figure that matters most, which is that Transport Accident Commission data confirms 30 more lives are lost each year on regional roads than in metropolitan Melbourne. Thirty people a year is what it costs to treat road maintenance as optional.

A Liberal–Nationals government will do this properly. We will invest $5 billion to rebuild, repair and resurface roads across Victoria, and we will do it properly rather than patching over the top, as the member for Macedon suggested, and hoping nobody notices until the election or after it. We will eliminate 1 million potholes. We will fund preventative maintenance so that the potholes do not form in the first place, instead of the reactive patch and run the Auditor-General has just condemned. We will establish Better Roads Victoria to rebuild the technical and engineering expertise this government threw away when it abandoned VicRoads and axed Regional Roads Victoria. We will get the basics right: mowing roadsides, slashing grass, clearing drains, removing graffiti within 24 hours, all of it funded and done properly.

We will deliver a fair share guarantee. Twenty-five per cent of Victorians live in regional Victoria, and they will get at least 25 per cent of the infrastructure funding. At the moment they get 12 per cent. Regional Victorians are not asking for special treatment, they are asking for the roads they already pay for with their taxes. Can I say also, as Shadow Minister for Local Government, we have allocated $1.5 million a year to the 48 rural and regional councils of Victoria so that they can fund their own road and bridge works without referring to a complicated and questionable grant process – untied funding of $1.5 million a year for four years for the 48 rural and regional councils. They had it once under a Liberal–National government previously. This government scrapped it. It is vitally important that local governments get assistance to maintain their roads and bridges, because they actually control over 60 per cent of the road network in Victoria.

It is vitally important that we have a change of government on 28 November, if for no other reason than to fix our roads and make it safe for Victorians to drive from A to B. Children in buses are under threat. It is impossible to get product from the farm gate to the city. We feed and clothe the city, yet we struggle on the roads. The cost of repairs to everybody every day who does an axle or does a tyre is massive. It is a cost-of-living issue as well as a safety issue. After eight years of raising this, we have had enough of asking Labor to fix the roads. With the support of the Victorian people, we will do it ourselves in government.

 Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (11:01): I rise to speak in favour of this motion that has been brought forward by Mrs McArthur today, and I thank her for her continuous advocacy on this issue. As a fellow Western Victoria MP, I am very familiar with the state of our roads out there. Like many of my colleagues, I spend a lot of time out visiting different parts of the electorate. It is a very big electorate, and unfortunately there is a complete lack of decent public transport connections between even many of the bigger regional centres in Western Victoria, let alone some of the smaller towns, so we are very car dependent in that part of the world. Most people have to use some form of road vehicle to get around therefore the state of our roads is really, really important.

I regularly travel on certain routes – for example, from Geelong to Colac to Camperdown to Warrnambool and up to Melton and out to Ballarat – and I have experienced the appalling state of the roads. They are absolutely littered with potholes; it is incredibly stressful to drive on them. But sometimes I wonder if this is just normal and maybe my expectations are too high. I mean, the roads have been pretty bad for a long time, and you think, ‘Okay, well, roads get potholes,’ but the data backs up the experience that this is really terrible and it has been getting worse.

If we look at the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) report, it shows that almost half of Victoria’s roads are in poor or very poor condition. If look at RACV’s My Country Road 2026 survey results, four out of the top five of Victoria’s worst roads are in the Western Victoria Region and are on those same routes that I have spent a lot of time on, and I have that subjective experience of them being really dangerous and full of potholes. These things are not just a nuisance. This is not just something that becomes a bit of an annoying thing you have to put up with when you are driving. They damage cars, and fundamentally they are a safety issue. This is a safety issue for Victorians. They cause accidents, they cause injuries and tragically they have contributed to deaths on our roads. This is not some sort of inevitability. We hear a lot about our soils being volatile and how roads crumble and how we have got more vehicles on the roads so they do tend to fall apart, but this is not an inevitability – it is the result of deliberate decisions that have been made over decades by successive governments. It will not just be fixed by throwing more money at them and continuing on with business as usual. There needs to be a fundamental rethink of how we manage roads and a look at the root causes of some of the problems.

One of the first things we need to look at is how we have got to this place where millions and millions of dollars are being thrown at private contractors. As the VAGO report has made very clear, oversight of those contractors has been very poor. Standards have not been set properly, yet we continue to go along this line and in fact continue with the privatisation and outsourcing of road maintenance despite all the evidence showing that this is not working and our roads have been getting worse under that model. It was actually the Liberal Kennett government who started the privatisation journey of our road maintenance in this state in the mid to late 1990s. Despite some of the recent statements from Labor, they continued that journey of privatisation, they continued to outsource road maintenance.

The reason I think this is such a key contributor to the current problems that we have is that, if you think about the incentives that drive many of these contractors, their job is to fill potholes. So in fact their business model benefits from there being more potholes. There is nothing in their business model that creates an incentive for them to think about preventing those potholes forming. There is nothing in their business model that gets them to think about some of the bigger systemic causes of the potholes in the first place. When we think, ‘What are those systemic causes?’ well, firstly there is the issue, as I talked about before, of just the volume of vehicles on our roads, which is partly a consequence of a lack of a broader integrated transport plan across our state that considers freight and how we can get more freight off our roads. More frequent heavy trucks cause more potholes – it is just a fact. If we could shift more of our freight, where possible, off our roads and onto rail, that would help. But you need a statewide integrated transport plan, a thought about how we are moving freight properly to do that and then investment in those freight systems.

We have incredible car dependence, as I said, and there has been minimal investment in public transport infrastructure in the regions. We have done some advocacy on potential solutions. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit out in the regions. As Mrs McArthur said, 25 per cent of our population lives there. Does 25 per cent of the public transport infrastructure spending go out to the regions? I do not think so. We see that reflected in the very high levels of car dependency. If we could get some more people out of their cars and onto trains and fewer cars on our roads, that would make a difference: less wear and tear, fewer potholes. But a privatised road maintenance system is not thinking about those things. If we silo off and carve out road maintenance and think of it as a discrete thing, not part of a more complex system, we are going to end up with more of the same and continuing deterioration of our roads.

Other systemic issues that I do not think have been addressed adequately are things like the impact of climate change. We know that increased rain and flooding events in particular cause significant damage to our roads. We have seen that time and again. We saw it after the 2022 floods. But we have seen further issues with our roads as a result of climate change with fires and heavy rainfall events again and again. This is only going to get worse. Unless we are looking at some of the structures and other things around our roads that can mitigate the impact of some of those extreme weather events on the roads themselves and then looking at the actual way we build, construct, resurface and fill those potholes with a mind to the increasing stress that will be put on our roads as a result of what we know will come with climate change, again we are going to end up with worsening roads and a failure to address the root causes of the problem here.

That is why, from the Greens’ perspective, we believe that road maintenance does need to come back in house. We need to move away from this privatised model, because if it comes back into government there is a greater opportunity to look at this from a whole-of-government perspective and look at some of these root causes. The incentive to look at prevention, I think, is much greater from a government’s perspective, because in the end the incentives are about ‘How do we not have to spend more money on fixing our roads?’, so that prevention question becomes a primary one, unlike the situation where you have got privatised road maintenance.

I will leave my comments there, but I would just like to reiterate that this has come up as a really big election issue not because of some funny post that someone has done, not because a few loud voices are talking about this but because this is a real problem. It is a real problem for people out in the regions. It is causing real safety issues. It is terrible that it has got to this state and that there have been tragic incidents that have really, I think, highlighted how dangerous the situation currently is. What I am pleased to see is that it has finally become a focus of all parties for this upcoming election. What I do hope is that it will not just mean a bit more money thrown at the situation and that we all move on. What we need to do is take this opportunity to have a look at the system as a whole and think about how we can do this better and fix the systemic problems that have led to this problem that we have in the first place.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:11): I am pleased to rise to speak on Mrs McArthur’s motion in relation to roads maintenance. I will be making some comments about the Auditor-General’s recent report Maintaining State Roads and also some other matters. I think it is clear to anyone who has been out and about in regional Victoria or in parts of metropolitan Melbourne that there are issues on our roads. There are potholes that need to be fixed, and there are roads that need some more fundamental road maintenance. Labor absolutely acknowledges that road maintenance is an incredibly important issue for Victoria and for Victorians. Our road network is the lifeblood of so many, whether they are in industry, whether they are in agriculture or whether they are just people going about their daily lives and commuting or getting out on the roads for the long weekend that is about to land here. There will be many people from Melbourne heading out across regional Victoria this grand final long weekend, taking advantage of this public holiday that we have still got – for this year at least – in Victoria. You never know what is going to happen if big business get their way and get a Liberal–One Nation government. They might get rid of this public holiday – we do not know.

What we do know is that on public holiday long weekends people get in their cars and they go out to regional Victoria – they go and support regional economies, and they drive on regional roads. Labor understand that we have got to do more as a state to improve the condition of our roads. That is why this government is making significant investment in road maintenance here in Victoria, investing another $352 million right now to double the amount of potholes it is fixing and double the length of road repair that it is going to complete right now. In fact the crews are out fixing the roads already, and more work continues as the weather gets warmer. This is part of an investment that is going to help address some of the issues that were rightly identified in the Auditor-General’s report, and we absolutely want that to continue to occur. That is why it has been made a priority by the Premier. Getting out and fixing our roads is an important priority for the Premier. The additional investment right now and the crews out right now are part of an immediate response. But that is not the totality of the long-term solution. We absolutely need to do the immediate investment, but we have also got to think about how we improve things for the future and how we change things for the better. That is why Labor, if re-elected, are going to change the way we fix roads and deliver better roads for Victorians.

What we have seen, I think quite considerably, is both the changing nature of the way much of the road network is used and the changing conditions that are impacting them. The impact of things like the devastating flood event in 2022 –

Nick McGowan interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: Mr McGowan interjects and says, ‘Water, water’. I think Mr McGowan might understand basic physics and that, yes, water does play a role in undermining road conditions. Those of us who participated in the Legislative Council Environment and Planning Committee’s inquiry into the 2022 flood event heard stories directly in that inquiry about the impact that that flood event had on Victorian roads. It is a disgrace that the Liberal Party today is denying the evidence of people from regional Victoria who came forward and gave evidence to that inquiry. I think it is a disgrace that Mr McGowan is denying the evidence.

Jacinta Ermacora: On a point of order, President, it is very difficult to hear my colleague here, Mr Batchelor, and it feels a bit like badgering from Mr McGowan. We deserve to be able to hear what is being said.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mr Batchelor to continue without assistance.

Ryan BATCHELOR: If Mr McGowan is scared of a response to his interjections, he should not make them. And if he is scared of being called out for denying the evidence of regional Victorians about the impact that devastating floods had on our roads, then he will be hoist on his own words.

This government is changing the way we deal with road maintenance here in the state of Victoria. We are taking back control and we are taking back responsibility. We are going to work with experts and local authorities and develop a plan to put the government back in charge of state road maintenance programs. We will develop new statewide standards for road quality and road safety to lift the bar everywhere and for everyone. We will empower our five road maintenance regions, because the best road maintenance decisions will be made by people who drive on them most, and we will work actively and constructively with local councils. We will develop a simple reporting system where you can report problems to see the repairs that we are making. That is exactly what I think communities expect in a modern Victoria.

The Liberals want to come into this place and tell us that they have got a solution and that they can be trusted to fix Victoria’s roads. But you cannot trust the Liberals on roads, because the last time they were in government they cut $160 million from the road maintenance budget and sacked 450 people from VicRoads. They cut it before and they will cut it again, because the Liberals have already said that the cuts are coming for Victorian services. The Liberals have already promised to cut services here in Victoria, and we know that once again road maintenance is going to be on the chopping block. They have already promised it. They have already promised their economic –

Bev McArthur interjected.

Ryan BATCHELOR: On a point of order, Acting President, the Leader of the Opposition in this place has just called me a liar, and I ask that she withdraw.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mrs McArthur, I ask you to withdraw.

Bev McArthur: I withdraw.

Ryan BATCHELOR: The Liberals are promising cuts, and road maintenance is on the chopping block, because that is what they did last time.

Bev McArthur: I have a point of order, Acting President. You have got to be factual, Mr Batchelor, and that is not factual. We have actually promised increased funding, way more than you have, and we have promised to fix the roads, so keep to the facts, Mr Batchelor – don’t tell mistruths.

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Michael Galea): Mrs McArthur, that is a point of debate, it is not a point of order. There is no point of order.

Ryan BATCHELOR: If Mrs McArthur has not read her leader’s economic plan, then that is not my fault. But that economic plan lays out very clearly that there is going to be $40 billion of cuts to the state budget here in Victoria, and you cannot cut that much money out of the state budget in Victoria without cutting things like road maintenance. We know they will do it again, because they have done it before. You can always trust the Liberals to make cuts. You can always trust the Liberals to cut services. Last time they were in power they cut road maintenance. They sacked 450 people out of VicRoads. They will absolutely do it again because cuts are what Liberals do, and you cannot trust them on road maintenance.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (11:20): There must be some school that people on that side go to where there is training about having total, complete and utter ignorance of the facts. You insert the talking points from the Labor government, and you just rearrange life. You rearrange the facts. As I was sitting here listening, what came to me was a strange topic – I am totally in support of this motion, and thank you very much, Mrs McArthur, for bringing it – about Pride and Prejudice. I know that is an interesting topic, but let me go there. Our people who live in rural and regional Victoria are very proud people. They create our food and our fibre. They create resilience. They create the nourishment that fills our plates and supplies not only the state and the nation but overseas. We create that generation of assets and produce – world class. And I have heard these people sitting opposite us talk about it. We hear it all the time, how wonderful our farmers are, how wonderful their produce is. They are wonderful and it is wonderful. Our people are proud and stoic and do the right thing and produce for our nation. And then what we have seen over time in this government is a total prejudice against rural and regional people. This government have turned their back on these people, and they have done it in a variety of ways. They have shut down industry in my Eastern Victoria Region, the native timber industry. They have turned their back on the CFA – again, a proud bunch of people who serve us when there is fire coming over the hill. They have disregarded us again and again. What they do is prejudice against us by cutting funding to the very lifeblood, the very network, that keeps our communities connected, our roads.

You only have to look at the RACV. Do not listen to Melina Bath, read the RACV report. It was fed into by thousands of people – 6143 respondents who submitted 10,000 requests for road improvement. It found 71 per cent of respondents identified potholes and rough surfaces as their biggest road safety concern. So when we talk about pride – and I want to talk about pride in our regions – I also want to talk about the prejudice that this government, under Allan, Andrews and now Carroll as Premier, has overseen. This is not fair, and we certainly have a plan, which I will go into. I thank Mrs McArthur for alluding to it.

The Premier the other day – what a faux pas again. How do they stare at people in a press conference? How do they actually lie straight? Premier Carroll on one hand said integrity is not optional, and when challenged about the poor state of the roads in Victoria he said, ‘Well, I’m not the roads minister.’ Do you forget, Premier, that you were the roads minister for 2½ years? You were in control of our road maintenance funding, and you cut it by $214 million in that small space of time. You were the architect of some of those potholes – of many, many, many potholes.

Now let me go to some of the regional road results from the My Country Road campaign of the RACV. I thank the RACV for explaining to this government what country people know. And I take up Mr Batchelor’s point that the poor people in the city – and I love our state and I love Melbourne as well – on public holidays get to travel out to the regions. Thanks for coming. We need your money. We need your tourism dollars. But those poor people have to drive over potholes. Well, every single bus driver has to drive through potholes or dodge them and every single truck and transport taking beautiful Bulmer products from East Gippsland or milk from Leongatha dairy farmers every single day has to cope with potholes.

I happened to be out in Maryborough the other day talking with our fantastic candidate for Ripon Jo Armstrong, and I was at Connewarre down near Geelong with my colleagues Danny O’Brien and Mrs McArthur, and then I travelled up that road and I thought, ‘Yep, it’s got to be one of the worst roads.’ It is in a shocking state. The jury is in from the My Country Road survey for the top three most dangerous roads – and I will get to that point in a minute, dangerous roads: Princes Highway West, Colac to Camperdown; Princes Highway West, Portland to Port Fairy; and Loddon Valley Highway, Bendigo to Kerang. Those good people up there and my colleague Gaelle Broad would know all about that.

Let us look at some of them in Eastern Victoria Region. This is a road I travel on daily, because I actually live in my electorate as well, which is always good. I love my electorate and I live in it. Strzelecki Highway, Leongatha to Mirboo North, I know very well. We hear from community members – and thank you, Craig Young, the Mirboo North butcher, who does a fantastic job. He is often telling me the table drains are not cleaned out, there are depressions, the road edges are deteriorating and there are potholes there, and we raise it through the right channels, through the minister, because it is a state-owned road, and we get this superfluous answer back saying, ‘Well, you mentioned a council road, so you should talk to your council.’ No-one is taking that responsibility. Ultimately, it is the Minister for Roads and Road Safety and this Allan government that are responsible. So Strzelecki Highway and then Princes Highway East, Bairnsdale to Lakes Entrance. I was down there the other day in beautiful East Gippsland talking with the candidate for the Nationals for the upcoming election Gemma Rendell, a fantastic local girl. Again, I drove on those roads, and they are shocking. South Gippsland Highway, Loch to Leongatha, is an example. Anyone who drives on the South Gippsland Highway will tell you that every bit along that road, right down to Wilsons Prom, is in a shocking state, and you really have to watch those potholes to save your life.

Years ago we used to have a slogan, back in 2010, ‘Fix country roads, save country lives’, and that is what we are about right now. We do have a plan. Our plan is building better and building safer roads. Again, we have got $5 billion over four years, that is a 25 per cent uplift in funding for our roads to eliminate 1 billion potholes. We will also establish Better Roads Victoria. It is not just about putting something in the pothole, it is about ensuring that when that work is done it stays fixed. And that is what establishing Better Roads Victoria will do, making sure that there is that technical expertise in our road building and maintenance capability. Of course the contractors can only make to standard. They get the contract and do the work. But it is about making sure that that contract work is done properly, and we have not seen it for the last decade, and also making sure that there are tough standards that hold the construction companies accountable.

I thank Danny O’Brien. He has been the pothole man. He has been everywhere. We had a ‘Potholes for all seasons’ calendar, and it went very well. Why? Because country people are incredibly tolerant, but we also have to have a sense of humour. Sometimes you have got to laugh or you would cry. And there are many people who have wrecked the rims of their cars and wrecked their whole system because of those roads. I also just want to put on record my sincere condolences to the family of the gentleman who lost his life, the motorcyclist, only recently. They must feel so devastated.

When I first came in in 2015 the government and Premier Andrews at the time removed the country roads and bridges program, and all of our local councils were so frustrated with that and came out and spoke to us. We are going to reintroduce a country roads and bridges program – that is $288 million over four years; that is $1.5 million annually to 48 local councils. I know they are all rejoicing. These are our local roads and our local bridges, because when you make that fantastic product at Bulmer Farms, for example, or on a dairy farm in South Gippsland, you have got to get it to market and you often have got to go over those local bridges. I fully endorse this motion, and I thank wholeheartedly Mrs McArthur for bringing it forward. We are not going to be proud or prejudiced against Victorians; we are going to be sense and sensibility – (Time expired)

 Rikkie-Lee TYRRELL (Northern Victoria) (11:31): I rise to support Mrs McArthur’s motion and to acknowledge the Auditor-General’s very serious findings about the state of Victoria’s roads. The Auditor-General has confirmed what regional Victorians have been saying for years: our roads are getting worse. In 2021, 39 per cent of Victoria’s state roads were classified as being in poor or very poor condition. By 2024 that figure had risen to 48 per cent. That is not a minor deterioration; it is a clear warning that the government’s approach to road maintenance is not working. The Auditor-General also found that the road maintenance backlog is large and growing, that funding is insufficient, that the department lacks meaningful targets and that there are shortcomings in the quality assurance of roadworks. One in eight inspected works were defective and required rework, and Victorian motorists are paying the price.

Recent data obtained via FOI shows that over two financial years 1809 motorists lodged claims for damage allegedly caused by road conditions, yet only 23 claims were successful, with a combined $223,833 paid in compensation. That does not mean the other motorists did not suffer damage; it means they did not receive compensation. The government’s own rules currently require motorists to absorb the first $1681 of eligible property damage before a claim can even be considered. This is particularly concerning in regional Victoria, where people often have no choice but to travel long distances on state roads for work, education, health care and freight.

This motion is therefore about transparency and accountability. Victorians deserve to know where the road maintenance money is going, which roads are deteriorating, how large the backlog is and when those roads will actually be repaired. The government must publish road condition data, maintenance backlogs, repair data, regional allocations and realistic repair timetables. Victorians do not need more excuses; they need roads that are safe, maintained and fit for purpose. For those reasons, One Nation Victoria supports this motion.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (11:33): I welcome this opportunity to speak on the new direction that Ben Carroll is taking our state and in particular in relation to roads. I want to thank Ben Carroll for taking action on roads, for listening to our regional communities and for his acknowledgement that our roads – I think he said they have not been good enough. Regional Victorians have been expressing concern about roads, and there has definitely been frustration. Certainly the previous contribution acknowledged that. We now have Ben Carroll in charge, and actions are being taken straightaway as a result. As my colleague Mr Batchelor mentioned, immediately redirecting money from city projects into regional pothole repairs is the number one action that is being taken.

I think that it is really important that we get on with those pothole repairs. But of course there are some bigger problems than that, and I will cover off on that. We are investing another $352 million, in addition to our record investment, to double the amount of potholes we are fixing in this road repair period. Our road crews are already out there. I think if you have been on regional roads, you cannot say you have not passed a road crew. I have passed many. The extra $352 million will be invested straight into doubling the amount of potholes that we are fixing. This money is purposely being redirected to regional Victoria from Melbourne projects, as the Carroll Labor government recognises and acts on regional roads immediately. There is a plan and there is an acknowledgement that, as our Premier said, our Victorian roads are simply not good enough.

We also know that we cannot trust the Liberals on investing money in any particular area – cuts is more the theme than anything. Our list of actions actually heads towards getting to the bottom of this roads challenge which we acknowledge. A re-elected Carroll Labor government will deliver a comprehensive plan to improve the quality of our roads – yes, act on the potholes immediately, but let us fix the problem once and for all. There is no doubt there have been challenges responding to climate change events like flooding, but there is also no doubt that contracting out to private sector construction, profit-taking from public money, has been ineffective in the quality. That is why we are going to bring road maintenance accountability back in house. The government will be implementing the road maintenance, and it will be accountable for doing that. Contracting out road maintenance has failed our state – another example of where private contracting has failed our community. I am aware of people who formerly worked for VicRoads who no longer work for VicRoads because of their frustration at the quality of the work being undertaken. Certainly the informal feedback I get from some locals is extremely positive in that space.

I know those opposite do not like that we have got a plan now, but we do. And it is nothing like what you would do. You would just throw more money into –

Members interjecting.

Jacinta ERMACORA: We are going to do things differently, and that is what Ben Carroll is offering. We are going to provide a higher level of accountability and an app for people to lodge their potholes, and the government will be accountable for the repairs that happen. People will be able to look up that pothole that they lodged and see whether it has been fixed or not or what the journey is for that. We will deliver a simple website to do that. We will be increasing the standards of road construction, making improvements in that space which will reflect the local knowledge. We will listen to what regional communities say about the roads that are important to them. Engineering is important, technical knowledge is important and lifting the quality is important, but listening to what communities are saying ought to be a part of that decision-making as well.

We are going to use minimum security prisoners to work on the roadside so that the technical experts can focus on the road surface – more hands on deck. We will work with Corrections Victoria to pilot having minimum security prisoners helping with basic roadside management like mowing and graffiti removal. This will give the experts much more of a focus on the actual road surface, as I said. Labor will develop a plan alongside experts and local workforces to put government back in charge of road maintenance. We will establish one simple website where you can report on road issues that need attention and see for yourself where we are planning repairs and when. Labor will give our five road maintenance regions a local say, and Labor will work with Corrections Victoria on a pilot program, as I said, for prisoners to play a role. That will be to assess whether or not that works.

There is no doubt that contracting out has been less than successful – absolutely. We are bringing road maintenance in this state back in house under government accountability where all of the money goes into road repairs, none of the money goes to private sector profit-taking and the standards are lifted and monitored for exactly that. As I close, I want to say a thankyou to Ben Carroll, our Premier, for taking us in a new direction in this space, for acknowledging the challenges that we face in regional Victoria on our roads and for responding in an effective and sustainable way. It is really important to know that if you just keep doing the same thing, you will get the same outcome. You are proposing to just keep throwing money. Ben Carroll is going to do things differently, and that will solve the problem once and for all.

 Wendy LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (11:43): It gives me great delight to stand and speak on this motion. I congratulate Mrs McArthur for bringing it before the house. I was going to do a lot of talking about the Auditor-General’s report that shows the poor condition of the roads in regional Victoria and how more than half of them are in very poor condition and go through a lot of the roads in Northern Victoria, but first of all I want to rebut some of the tripe that has been put about by Labor Party members this morning.

We had Mr Batchelor claiming that Mr McGowan had ignored the evidence that northern Victorians had given about the state of the roads in the floods. The floods were four years ago. The flood inquiry, we heard that evidence about the state of the roads after the floods two years ago. Surely those roads should have been fixed in four years, Mr Batchelor. But what we are talking about now is the condition of the roads in Northern Victoria, which is worse than it was even straight after the floods. While Mr Batchelor accused Mr McGowan of ignoring evidence, what I would say is that Mr Batchelor was twisting the evidence. The potholes in Northern Victoria have increased tenfold from what they were in 2022.

Now I move on to Ms Ermacora’s bizarre contribution. She talked about the government having a plan to fix potholes and doubling the number of potholes they fixed last year. Again, the trouble is that the potholes have increased tenfold, so doubling what they did last year will not go anywhere near fixing the potholes that we have in regional Victoria. We even had Minister Erdogan tell us that he has been seeing potholes as he has been visiting his new region down in eastern Victoria. But we also had Ms Ermacora admit that the government has been too busy rorting the public purse to hold contractors to account. What a poor reflection on her government that was. She then went on to blame the VicRoads privatisation for the standard of the repairs and said people were leaving VicRoads because they were embarrassed about the standard of repairs. There are two problems with what she was saying. The first problem is that it was Labor that privatised VicRoads. But the second and main problem is that VicRoads are not responsible for the repair of the roads. Labor changed that when they privatised it. VicRoads are responsible for licensing. The Department of Transport and Planning is responsible for fixing potholes, which it does very poorly. I am told by people in regional offices that part of that is because the government have not negotiated contracts correctly and there are loopholes in the contracts that let these contractors go and do a shoddy repair and then go back and repair it again a couple of weeks later – and they keep getting paid for repair after repair after repair. I remember on the Katamatite-Nathalia Road there was a pothole that must have been fixed 15 times before they actually did it properly.

The government have said that almost half of Victoria’s roads are in poor condition. The proportion of the road network that is in poor or very poor condition has gone from 39 per cent in 2021 – yes, Mr Batchelor, just prior to the floods – to 48 per cent in 2024, and it would be worse again by 2026. The report concluded that the government has a growing road maintenance backlog, resulting in the number of defects recorded and the number of defects repaired having more than doubled from January 2025 to January 2026. The report concluded that Labor’s funding is insufficient to maintain or improve the condition of state roads. Labor’s inadequate funding means that maintenance is focused on reactive repairs rather than preventative works to stop potholes and other road pavement defects from emerging. Often the repairs, as I have already said, are of very poor quality and the road starts falling apart very soon after. The report confirms that the Department of Transport and Planning does not have effective oversight of contractors and cannot be sure that repair work is meeting the department’s defined standards.

The dire condition of state roads particularly affects rural and regional Victoria, where 82 per cent of the state road network is located. The state’s worst roads are concentrated in northern Victoria, with Hume region having 57 per cent of roads rated as being in poor or very poor condition, and Loddon Mallee region having 69 per cent in poor or very poor condition. Thirty-seven per cent of all state roads are classed as being in very poor condition, with less than five years of remaining useful life, and must be rehabilitated within two years. The report reveals that if re-elected, Labor intends to reduce its investment in roads by over 50 per cent after the 2026 state election. That is an appalling admission of the Labor government – that they are going to actually reduce that funding again. Ms Ermacora can talk about doubling the number of potholes fixed this year, but next year they are going to halve it again.

The RACV recently released their roads survey. The RACV asked road users to provide feedback on the state of country roads, and the results were damning for a Labor government that has neglected regional Victoria for 12 years. According to the report, 10 of the 20 worst roads are in my electorate of Northern Victoria. The third-worst road is the Loddon Valley Highway from Bendigo to Kerang; the sixth-worst road is the Melba Highway from Yea to Dixons Creek; the seventh-worst is the Goulburn Valley Highway from Maroondah Highway, Yea to Mansfield; the ninth-worst is the Murray Valley Highway from Wodonga to Tallangatta; the 10th-worst is the Northern Highway from Echuca to Heathcote; the 13th-worst is the Northern Highway and McIvor Highway, Wallan to Bendigo; the 14th-worst is the Midland Highway from Benalla to Mansfield; the 16th-worst is the Murray Valley Highway from Corryong to Tallangatta; the 18th-worst is the Murray Valley Highway from Swan Hill to Robinvale; and the 19th-worst is the Calder Highway from Ouyen to Charlton. But I tell you what, it is not limited to those roads in Northern Victoria that are poor. Our roads are in a disgraceful state because Labor has neglected road maintenance and has put Victorian road users at risk because of the state of Victoria’s roads.

 Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (11:51): I rise to speak on Mrs McArthur’s motion 1644 about the perilous state of our roads in this state. Obviously I am a country member and I drive around, but being the only member from my party I do not just drive around the east of Victoria, I drive around the west. I have got family out west; a lot of them used to live even further out west. Anyway, I get around here and there, and the one thing that cannot be disputed is that the state of the roads is dire out in the country. It is funny, and at the risk of getting a little political, there is a sticker going around that says ‘I’m not drunk, I’m just avoiding potholes’. I actually appreciate that, because as you are driving around – pick any part of the state, even the major freeways – you have got to pay attention to the road ahead, not just to the cars, because some of the potholes are getting big enough that they are causing a lot of damage. Even in my great big Tonka truck four-wheel drive I have still got to drive around some of them – the tyres cost more to fix.

The question is: how did we get here, and more to the point, what do we do about it? The next election will be what the next election will be. I know people are promising all sorts of things on both sides of the chamber. What we need, though, is a concentrated attack on fixing the major ones. Obviously we had the tragic incident where a motorcyclist died. In a car you have a measure of safety, but if you come off a motorbike, well, there is not a lot between you and the ground – some clothes, basically. I have fallen off enough motorbikes; I am never getting on another one. They are probably the most vulnerable road users. Sometimes they ride in a manner which does not help them. When you have got someone just minding their own business riding down the road and they hit a pothole that is bad enough for them to come off and be killed, that is a warning flag. To be fair, it should not be a political issue, it should be a road safety issue. The road safety issue is an issue where people need to be able to get on the road and drive safely. There are enough problems as it is with so many cars on the road, and of course more cars mean more wear and tear, but that is the nature of the beast. We can have more trains if we want; we can have this, we can have that. The nature of our country is such that we are so geographically spread out for our small population that vehicles of all sorts will always be a feature.

The freeways I have noticed over the years have suffered mightily. Having said that, for many, many years I used to travel out to Portland to visit family. I have got to say that on the road between Geelong and Portland in some places you do need a four-wheel drive, because you have got to drive into the potholes, down the bottom and then out the other end. It was just appalling. I also am kind of critical about the way we build roads in this state. We build them out of asphalt only – a road base and then we compact it down, then we build it on asphalt. What that means is that with the constant driving on it you are slowly spreading it out, and there is not a solid base underneath it, like concrete. It means the roads need to be fixed. In those times when we get more wet weather, what you get is effectively a water hammer. Every time a vehicle goes over, it pushes water into the little faults or fissures or whatever and starts spreading it out. This ends up in a situation where even on the major freeways you need to have a lot of upkeep. The Western Freeway to Ballarat is a case in point – we spend so much time driving at 40 kilometres an hour for kilometres where lanes are blocked off because it is too dangerous, but no-one is fixing them.

We are in a state. We need to move forward. We need to get it done. But I also think it is time that we as a state, and possibly as a country, look at how we are building our roads and our major arterials. I look at the Americans with their interstates and Germany with their autobahn. They do not just build them the way we build them. They build them with a much more solid base so that they last longer and are safer. It is more expense now. Obviously if you want to do a concrete road between here and Sydney, for instance, it would be a lot more expensive, but the longer term pay-off is that you do not have to continually dig it up and fix it. When you look at world’s best practice on interstate roads, none of them do roads the way we do. Perhaps it is an employment thing, perhaps it is a someone-making-money thing, I do not know, or perhaps we just have not thought that far forward. But what we have got now really is not working. We can spend billions of dollars on a road now, and what will happen is that in 10 or 20 years we will probably be back at it.

I thank Mrs McArthur for raising this. The whole state is suffering. I think in the parts of northern Victoria where we had the floods was when it started going backwards because we sent all the stuff up to fix that, and in the meantime – Mr Batchelor, I am not taking sides in this; I am giving everyone a serve – and that ended up with not enough work being done on the rest of it. I have the luxury of never wanting to be in government, but as a government, whether it is the opposition or the government gets returned, we need to stop making a political football out of this, we need to put a decent amount of funding into it and we need to make sure the roads are safe. I have heard it in here before, but I will say it: our cars have to be roadworthy, but our roads are not car worthy, and that is just a really bad place to be. The longer we wait, the harder it will get. Whether or not I am in here, I will be watching you two guys, and I will be critical of whoever does not do the job right.

 Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (11:58): The debate during this motion – if anyone had any doubt about the division that the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation are going to take to Victorians over the next 70-odd days, or whatever it is we have until the election, this is a great example. We have seen it historically: they want to divide people in our state. They do not want to see one Victoria, they want to divide people into groups. They want to divide people into groups and separate them, because that is what they do.

There are many things Victorians need, many things that I am incredibly proud to be a member of the Labor Party delivering – early education, our schools, our healthcare system, aged care investment, our public transport, rebuilding V/Line, investment in trains throughout metropolitan Melbourne. But we have acknowledged that our roads are not up to scratch. But that is the Victorian road network from one end of our state to the other, like the services we deliver. We heard Ms Bath make her contribution. She said, ‘Every part of the South Gippy highway is falling apart.’ What about the $115 million on the Black Spur upgrade, the Strzelecki upgrades? There are upgrades going on.

Members interjecting.

Tom McINTOSH: That is not the takeaway that we have got. We have got to fix the roads, but to just sit there and say the entire stretch of road –

The PRESIDENT: Sorry, Mr McIntosh. It is time to interrupt debate for questions and ministers statements.

Business interrupted pursuant to resolution of Council of 22 September.