Ms TIERNEY (Western Victoria) — Throughout the electorate of Western Victoria Region there are many complaints about the services and funding that the Napthine government has cut from regional Victoria, yet the issue I hear about most consistently regardless of where I go is the Napthine government’s failure to fix damaged and potholed roads. Regional Victorians quite frankly are sick of it — they are sick of the Napthine government ignoring them and their safety on the roads.
Over the last financial year $160 million has been slashed from VicRoads, which has significantly decreased VicRoads capacity to ensure that our roads are fit for use. There are seven VicRoads districts in Victoria, and every single one of them has had a significant amount of funding stripped from its budget.
Yet nowhere has this been greater than in the south-western region, which covers the Assembly electorates of the Premier and the Minister for Roads; $37.3 million — or 37.6 per cent — of the south-western region’s road funding has been cut by the Premier and the Minister for Roads in their own electorates.
It is little wonder my constituents in Western Victoria Region are constantly talking to me about unsafe roads and stating that the government simply is not listening. But the Labor opposition is listening, and through the ‘fix our roads’ online campaign Victorians now have the chance to tell Labor which roads have been neglected and forgotten by the Napthine government. Tipping $8 billion into a hole that nobody wants will not do anything for congestion in Melbourne, and it certainly will not do anything for the dangerous roads the Napthine government expects constituents in its electorates to travel on every day.