Matters of public importance
Danny O’BRIEN (Gippsland South) (16:01): This is the issue du jour, particularly if you are in regional Victoria. It is the issue that is on everybody’s lips. It has been, if you are a country MP, for a long time. But I have got to say as I travel around the state and as I talk to colleagues, possibly even some on the other side, they are all saying how much this is an issue for Victorians. Our roads are in an absolutely appalling state. It is absolutely appalling what they have got to, and the number of potholes is out of control.
I will preface my comments with this: we do use potholes somewhat as a proxy for the state of the road, because it is not just about potholes. It is about cracking, rutting, uneven surfaces and patching over patching over patching over patching. It is about broken shoulders. It is about the shoulders not being graded. It is about drains not being cleared out. It is about vegetation growing through the sides of the road, not just grass. Particularly in the situation where there are roadside barriers, there are often saplings and sometimes even small trees coming through the sides of the roads. It is graffiti, and it is graffiti not just on the roadsides but on the freeways in Melbourne that people are talking about constantly. The rubbish, the neglect – it is symbolic. It is symbolic of the state that Victoria has come to, and that is what people are saying back to us. That is what I am hearing. People are saying our roads have deteriorated just like our state has. And it is extraordinary that we have a government that is continuing to blame the state of the roads on the weather.
Two weeks ago I went up to Bendigo on a Sunday, and I drove up the Calder Highway. The Calder Highway had multiple sections where the entire left-hand lane was closed, in some cases for a couple of kilometres, because they were actually filling potholes or they had filled potholes. There were signs up that simply said, ‘Potholes ahead next 20 km. Storm damage.’
Roma Britnell interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: Storm damage, member for South-West Coast. Who is thinking that the government is unable to build a road that will cope with a storm? I would actually challenge the government to explain what storm that was. No question, about a month ago in northern Victoria there was a fair bit of rain. There was actually quite a bit of rain, but I do not think it was storm damage. As the member for South-West Coast indicated, Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia have cyclones and monsoons. We have got places in the Northern Hemisphere that have temperatures from minus 50 through to 30-plus degrees, and snow and ice, and their roads can cope with the weather. Indeed the Romans made roads 2000 years ago, some of which in Europe are still being used.
Nathan Lambert interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: Some people would say, member for Preston, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ Well, they could build a road bloody better than the Victorian government does. That is what absolutely astounds me. Some of those Roman roads are still in use, and the Romans –
Jade Benham interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: They have not got potholes, and the Romans were not blaming the weather. That is what it has come to in this state. It is simply extraordinary that our roads have got so bad. I was coming down the Goulburn Valley Highway about three weeks ago on my way back from Shepparton, that wonderful city of Shepparton, and I saw some horrendous potholes. Again, it was just after that bit of rain that we had. When I say ‘bit of rain’, it was a maximum of 80 to 100 mils. It was not a monsoon, it was not a flood, it was just normal winter rain – a good drop, but normal winter rain. The potholes on the Goulburn Valley Highway, which is duplicated and almost freeway standard, were extraordinary. I stopped, got out, took some photos and did a little socials video – as we do these days, because it is the thing that goes so good on socials because everyone is sick of it. I went a bit further along, about another kilometre down the road, and there were some more potholes. I thought, ‘Well, pull over. These are even better’ – as in worse. I pulled over, and there was a car there. Young Tanisha, who was a P-plater, was on her way from Shepparton. She was actually going to a job interview. She had hit a pothole and just smashed her tyre to smithereens.
A member interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: A very common story indeed. As luck would have it, we saw her there and went over. She had her dad with her. She is actually originally from Singapore, and her dad was out visiting from Singapore. She was on the phone to the prospective employer she was going to see to say that she was going to be late because she had hit a pothole and blown a tyre. We fixed it up for her, changed her tyre and sent her on her way. But that is a story –
Jade Benham interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: I would not have done that for you, member for Mildura, because you are a competent woman and you would have done it yourself. But in the days around that, the Leader of the Opposition and I went to the seat of Euroa, and we drove from Mangalore to Creightons Creek. Only about 20 k’s of that is on the Hume Freeway. In the time that I was there on a Sunday afternoon I saw five cars pulled over on the side of the road, changing tyres, in about 20 k’s, including one that was being put on the back of a truck, so I suspect it had blown more than one tyre or the vehicle had been damaged so badly that it literally had to be towed. This is the story we are hearing repeatedly around the state everywhere we go.
Jade Benham: It is the start of a new tunnel.
Danny O’BRIEN: You are stealing my thunder, member for Mildura. But when I posted the pictures of the Goulburn Valley Highway, one of the best comments was from someone who stated that it was not a pothole, it was just the start of a new Labor government tunnel. I thought that was actually probably pretty prescient, because the potholes are that big you could almost drive a train through them. It is out of control.
The response from the government every year is to say, ‘We’ve got this big road maintenance blitz.’ I have outlined here in the chamber before and literally read out six or seven years in a row the ‘Road maintenance blitz to fix our roads’ that the government does. The government is claiming to be spending $1.04 billion on road maintenance in the 2026–27 year. What they do not point out – and we pointed this out through the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, where the member for Mildura asked questions on my behalf in the hearings. She put in a few good ones of her own as well, because she is a very intelligent MP. The government might claim to be spending more, but it is actually doing less, and this is the thing that is so hard to comprehend. The government puts its headline figures out there and says, ‘It was $964 million two years ago. It was $976 million this year. Now it is $1.04 billion’ – record spending, they always say. But they are actually doing less. If the government are actually spending that money, what are they spending it on? Because the roads are actually going downhill; they are actually getting worse.
The budget papers reveal that the government has reduced targets for regional roads, and I say ‘regional roads’ because obviously as a Nationals MP that is my focus, but it is also some 75 per cent of the road network – a road network, I might say, that at 23,000 kilometres is the state government’s single biggest asset. For the last couple of years, in 2021–22 the government was resurfacing or rehabilitating 11.8 million square metres of road. I will say it again: resurfacing or rehabilitating 11.8 million square metres of road. The budget this year is just 2.9 million square metres of road. That is a reduction of 75 per cent.
This is where the government’s excuses are catching up with themselves, because they said a couple of years ago, after the 2022 floods, that they had to stop doing a lot of the resealing and resheeting of our roads and focus on rehabilitation, on patching, so they introduced a new performance measure in the budget for patching. Now they are saying that they are going back to doing more of the resurfacing, but the figures have still gone backwards. Indeed, on the patching alone, in this year’s budget the amount of road patching they will do is forecast to plunge from 556,000 square metres two years ago to just 76,000 square metres this year, an 86 per cent drop. Patching is going down, resurfacing is going down, resealing is going down and rehabilitation is going down, but the cost continues to go up. It is only a Labor government that could do less but still manage to spend more.
Jade Benham interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: It is Labor maths, member for Mildura. Over the 12 years of this government this has been a particular recurring theme. Instead of fixing the roads, the government’s solution is to reduce the speed limit. We have seen it time and time again. In some cases you will actually see a permanent sign that says ‘Rough road ahead, 80’. Instead of fixing it, they just put up a sign. We now have, according to the budget this year, 185 sections of road subject to a ‘pavement in poor condition’ management plan. In other words, they have not fixed the road. They have put up a sign and maybe some flashing lights and just left the road as it is.
This is an appalling state, and it is galling to Victorians and particularly to regional Victorians when you compare the state of our roads to the $15 billion of taxpayers money lost to corruption, stolen by crooks and bikies on the Big Build. Just think what that could have done for our roads. We would be able to dig up the Romans and get them back to do some with the amount of money we would have had if that money had not been wasted and we could put it towards roads. It is an outrage. That is just the corruption. We know for a fact from the budget papers that over $40 billion has been wasted in cost blowouts on the Big Build, whether it is the North East Link, the Metro Tunnel or the West Gate Tunnel. All of these have had multimillion dollar blowouts while we are driving around on goat tracks in the country, because this government could not be bothered to actually prioritise the basics. The single biggest asset the Victorian government owns is our road network, and we are not maintaining it.
There are a lot of general rules of thumb in road construction and maintenance. One of the general rules of thumb for bitumen roads is that you want to reseal them about every 10 to 15 years, so you want to be doing about 10 per cent of the network per year. You want to put that lot of bitumen down and another load of stones to keep a seal on the road. That seal is important. The bitumen is a waterproof seal; it stops the water getting in. When water gets in, that is what creates potholes. Vehicles go over it, particularly trucks, and that is why you spray seal. You also make sure that the water is not getting stuck on the side of the road. You grade the side of the road to allow water to get away. You make sure you have got a camber and you have got a roadside, the road shoulder, and gutters and drains, table drains, where the water can get away. That is not happening.
Jade Benham interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: One of the things that the member for Mildura points out is that when there are weeds or grass growing on the side of the road – and you can see it on thousands of kilometres of road across the state – it actually sits higher than the road. And what happens when it rains? That water then sits on the side of the road, eventually seeps in, subs under the road from the side, and that is when you get the surface breaking. Potholes form and you get a shocking road surface.
As I said, you should be doing about 10 per cent of the network a year. If you do that, you are resealing roughly every 10 or 15 years. Estimates are we are now down to 1.5 to 3 per cent of the network a year, and that is no surprise. Two years ago, in the 2023–24 summer season, the government did zero resealing. It did not do any. It was in a ministerial brief provided under freedom of information.
Jade Benham interjected.
Danny O’BRIEN: The government’s own numbers: it did zero. In the next year it did not much more, and in recent years it still is not doing anything. This is an issue that needs a solution, and the solution is a fresh start. The solution is a fair share for regional Victoria. We have announced our commitment to delivering $5 billion over four years to actually eliminate a million potholes – not just patch them so they come back again in three months time but actually eliminate them – and get back to doing that preventative maintenance that we need, get back to the resealing, get back to doing the roadside grading, cleaning out the drains and all of those issues. We will establish Better Roads Victoria to have technical and engineering expertise within the department to make sure that we are doing the roads properly.
This is important. It is not just about money; it is about doing the basics, and this government has failed to do the basics. We have spent our time in opposition learning and understanding and developing the policy, and we have a plan. We have a plan that will actually get our roads back under control. I warn Victorians: it is not going to happen overnight – indeed I think it will get worse before it gets better – but the Nationals and Liberals have got a plan to fix our roads, because they have been so badly neglected by this Labor government.