The Victorian Government’s decision to cut 45 per cent of the road maintenance budget since 2020, including a further 25 per cent in this year’s budget, has been met with criticism.
Victoria’s roads have seen dramatic deterioration, and state Member for Euroa Annabelle Cleeland is calling out what she sees as “financial incompetence”.
Ms Cleeland said it was “shocking” to learn this week the government had subsequently slashed $120 million from its road resurfacing budget.
“Roads in regional Victoria are still in desperate need of attention, yet more money is being cut,” Ms Cleeland said.
“They needed fixing before the October floods, and now the issue has only gotten worse.”
Ms Cleeland also said the road death toll continued to rise, with “far more deaths on roads than previous years”.
“We should be doing what we can to help prevent this issue, and it starts with the quality and safety of our roads,” she said.
Highlighting the condition of the roads in her electorate, Ms Cleeland described them as some of the worst in the state.
“There are potholes, crumbling roadsides and compromised surfaces in almost every town in the Euroa electorate,” she said.
“These roads are causing problems for commuters, the transport industry and visitors to our region.
“Labor’s pothole patching program is cheap, temporary and has been totally ineffective.”
Shadow Roads and Road Safety Minister Danny O’Brien pointed out that some locals had taken to spray-painting messages such as “fix our roads”, on the damaged roads.
“I recently saw such graffiti on a road in northern Victoria and bizarrely a reference to VicRoads had been crudely blacked over but the road itself hadn’t been fixed,” he said.
Mr O’Brien also said the government was more concerned with public relations than taking concrete action.
“The budget papers released in May listed the road area to be resurfaced across metropolitan and regional Victoria as ‘tbc’. Maybe they just meant ‘terribly bad condition’,” he said
A government spokesperson responded that the government was “investing an additional $2.8 billion over 10 years in road maintenance and renewal flood recovery, bringing the overall investment into maintaining Victoria’s road assets to $6.6 billion over that same 10-year period”.
“This new multi-year funding approach means we can plan a long-term road maintenance program and deliver works strategically across the state, including $770 million to maintain Victoria’s road assets in 2023-24,” they said.
According to the government, the damaged roads are attributed to the above-average rainfall experienced across many areas of the state during 2021-22, marking the wettest years in Victoria’s history, with October 2022 being the wettest month ever recorded in the state.
The government also said that this extreme rainfall had led to unprecedented damage to the roads, with new potholes continuing to open up months after the peak of the floods due to the amount of water left sitting under the surface.
The government said weather conditions had to be warmer and drier to carry out these repairs.
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