I would like to just continue from the contribution by the member for Bellarine, because when you are talking about being honest with Victorians, when you are talking about lacking credibility about what you say and what you actually do, we have had a marvellous document tabled in the Parliament today that would be exhibit A, VAGO’s Maintaining State Roads report, which provides an absolutely damning report on Labor’s cuts to the road asset management budget over 12 long years.
Member for Bellarine, this is where the credibility question lies – with the Labor government, who have forgotten that if they are going to stand in this place and say, ‘We’re going to fix the roads. Look at the wonderful roads that you’ve got,’ there are members of the Victorian community who are driving on these pothole-riddled roads every single day. They are people who have to use these roads. They cannot take a back road to avoid a pothole, because the back road is just as riddled with potholes as the normal route that they would go.
It does not matter whether you are taking your kids to school, if you are driving a school bus or if you are driving a grain truck to get your produce from farm gate to market to feed Victorians and feed Australians – in the country, we all have to deal with Labor’s utter failure to manage Victoria’s road network.
Let us talk about the most important thing of all: rural and regional Victoria have not got their fair share under a Labor government. They have never, ever delivered rural and regional Victoria their fair share. Eighty-two per cent of this state’s road network is in rural and regional Victoria, and yet Labor only delivers 70 per cent of the roads budget to this area – yet again another example where Labor simply overlooks the people who live in rural and regional Victoria. And that is what the Nationals will always stand for. We know that 25 per cent of the population live in rural and regional Victoria, so we deserve 25 per cent of the new infrastructure funding, and that is exactly what the Nationals will deliver.
We are sick of people like the Premier, who, when he was the Minister for Roads and Road Safety, stood in this place and said that there was a record investment in country road maintenance. At that very same time, at that point in time in June 2022, there had been an almost $200 million cut to the roads budget. So when Labor members in this place raise issues about credibility and not delivering what you say, talk to your Premier, because when he was the minister for roads he promised things that were simply not true.
It is the Auditor-General of Victoria who has uncovered this in his report that he has tabled today. From the contributions by the Labor MPs in this place, including rural and regional MPs – I cannot believe that they are collapsing and saying, ‘Oh, the roads are great. Don’t worry. If there’s a pothole, we’ll just fill it up.’ It is blown out the next day, but no-one cares about that. You only care about the headline and the media release about the numbers that go in.
Even then you are not honest about it. The Labor government is never honest with Victorians, but it is catching up with all of you. It is catching up with all of you, because there are mounting reports from authorities like the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. But most importantly, rural and regional Victorians have had enough of being told what to think when their experience each and every day is very, very different. Rural and regional Victorians are sick of driving on terrible roads. We are sick of hearing about the near misses. I heard about a near miss – it was a hit actually, a collision last week where a four-wheel drive bounced on a pothole and sideswiped a school bus.
These are people putting their lives at risk because the roads are so dangerous. They are critically dangerous. Every single day there is a near miss. I live in Horsham. When I travel to Melbourne every week I drive up the Western Highway. At the moment I count how many cars I see with their hazard lights on on the side of the highway because they have damaged their tyres or rims on the way through. Last Sunday it was four cars, for those who making any notes about that.
We know that there is a critical problem when the condition of our roads in country Victoria is a cost-of-living issue. It is costing Victorians more and more every day, with their tyres being blown out and with fractured rims. There are people who have had critical issues where their cars are pulled over on the side of the road and they are missing appointments, they are missing funerals and they are missing opportunities to go to the doctor and to get surgery. This has a flow-on effect. It is important to rural and regional people, and Labor have not got it right.
But most importantly, when the Premier was the minister for roads he lied to Victorians. He said it was a record investment into roads, and it was a $200 million cut. It was a 25 per cent cut. That does not cut it. Nobody believes that this Premier is any different to the previous two premiers we have had under a Labor government. We all see through it.
But it does not matter whether you are in my electorate, where we now have over 50 per cent of our roads in either poor or very poor condition; it does not matter whether you are travelling on the Henty Highway, the Hamilton Highway, the Glenelg Highway, the Western Highway, the Wimmera Highway or some of our key connecting roads like the Warracknabeal-Birchip Road, the Ararat to Glenthompson road or the Mortlake-Ararat Road – it does not matter where you are – our roads are simply dangerous.
It is not fair on our local people. It is not fair on the police and ambulance services, the CFA and the SES crews who have to travel on these roads and particularly those emergency services who have to turn up when there has been a tragic accident.
The Nationals will invest $5 billion into our state road network. The Nationals will invest $288 million into our local roads through our councils country roads and bridges program. This means $54 million for my electorate of Lowan alone.
It does not matter if you are travelling on our state roads or our local roads, you deserve a safe road. That is exactly what the Nationals will deliver. We will make sure that we fix our roads. We will make them safe, but most importantly, we will ensure that people in rural and regional Victoria get their fair share of the roads funding in the state of Victoria.