3 hours ago
2
Victoria’s crumbling roads will receive a $5 billion funding boost that will eliminate 1 million potholes under an election pledge by the Coalition to rebuild the state’s road-maintenance program.
With less than five months until the state election, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson and Nationals leader Danny O’Brien will on Monday unveil an election commitment they say will boost Victoria’s road maintenance budget by 25 per cent on current spending levels.
As part of the policy, the Coalition will promise to repair the worst potholes across the state, with the bitumen blitz to be overseen by a new division within the Department of Transport and Planning. Funding will also be allocated for drain clearing, grass slashing and graffiti removal.
Ahead of the election, the Coalition is seeking to capitalise on growing anger in regional areas over deteriorating roads across the state, arguing the crumbling network is both a safety issue and a cost-of-living burden as motorists face expensive repairs.
Wilson, who is touring all 88 lower house electorates, said the state’s roads were littered with dangerous potholes that are causing damage to vehicles.
“Drivers shouldn’t be the ones footing the bill for blown tyres, cracked rims and worse because Jacinta Allan and Labor cannot get the basics right,” Wilson said.
In 1999, rural electorates swung hard against the Coalition. Liberal premier Jeff Kennett was dumped at the election and Labor picked up eight seats across regional Victoria including Seymour, Bendigo East, Ripon and Ballarat East and West.
But after more than a decade in government, Labor’s popularity is waning, fuelled by a growing frustration in regional areas over deteriorating roads, stretched services and long-running cost-of-living concerns.
In the May budget, the Allan government committed $1 billion for road maintenance, which it said would repair 200,000 potholes.
Budget papers revealed, however, that the government set a target to patch 74,000 square metres of regional roads this financial year, down from 95,000 square metres the year before, and significantly below the 566,000 square metres completed in 2024-25.
Labor argues these figures reflect a shift away from short-term patching and a move towards longer-lasting resurfacing and rehabilitation works, although the amount of resurfacing work planned for this financial year is also forecast to drop.
The Coalition’s pledge comes as Victoria’s peak farming body last week launched a campaign to encourage regional drivers to document and report potholes and road hazards.
Victorian Farmers Federation president Ryan Milgate said the reports would help demonstrate the scale of the state’s decaying roads, which he described as “the worst they have ever been”.
“Many are literally falling apart and some are straight-up death traps,” Milgate said.
Earlier this month, police were forced to close off a lane on the Hume Freeway north of Seymour after a large pothole caused serious tyre damage to a string of cars.
The City of Whittlesea, which takes in the suburbs of Epping, Mernda and Whittlesea, has also identified more than 1000 defects across its state-owned road network alone, blaming the Department of Transport and Planning for the deteriorating conditions.
As part of the Coalition’s election promise, it will also demand more accountability from the department and contractors through a review of construction standards and maintenance contracts.
O’Brien, who is also shadow minister for roads and road safety, last week stopped to help a P-plater who suffered tyre damage after hitting a pothole on the Goulburn Valley Highway. He said the state’s roads had become “goat tracks”.
“Victorians are fed-up with half-hearted patch-up jobs that quickly fall apart,” O’Brien said.
He said regional areas received less than 12 per cent of infrastructure spending, despite making up 25 per cent of the state’s population.
The Coalition’s pledge comes a day after the Allan government unveiled its plan to crack down on unlicensed used-car traders and odometer tampering after research revealed almost one in three sampled used cars advertised online had their odometers wound back by at least 25,000 kilometres.
