Wednesday, 9 September 2026

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (16:41): I am pleased to be able to speak about the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office (VAGO) report Maintaining State Roads, which was tabled today. Whenever I speak to young people – I know we had Wangaratta High School visit Parliament this week – I talk about some of the basic services that government provides. Maintaining and building roads is one of those basic services that I talk about. This report actually goes into assessing and looking at how the government is doing when it comes to maintaining our state roads.

Some interesting facts: there are more than 23,000 kilometres of state roads in Victoria, state roads carry most of Victoria’s traffic and freight vehicles and 82 per cent of state roads are in regional Victoria, with just 18 per cent in metropolitan Melbourne. What they concluded – and I think that this is very important to highlight – is that:

The overall condition of Victoria’s state roads is deteriorating. In 2024, around 48 per cent of the network was in poor or very poor condition, compared to 39 per cent in 2021.

Victoria has a large and growing … maintenance backlog, where the network is deteriorating faster than the pace of repairs. Rising costs, increasing traffic and ageing roads make the backlog more challenging to address.

The department has advised the government that funding is insufficient to maintain or improve the condition of state roads. This has meant it focuses more on reactive and safety-critical repairs rather than preventative works.

The report is interesting reading, and it is not very long if you want to check it out. It was interesting to look at the graph of total road asset management funding. There was a significant drop in years 2021–22, and I am pretty sure that is when Ben Carroll was the Victorian Minister for Roads and Road Safety. It really went backwards there.

One of their key findings is that the proportion of roads in poor or very poor condition is increasing. That just means that the people that I have been speaking to as I drive around Northern Victoria – I have been in Shepparton in the last week. I have been to the Raywood listening post again – roads brought up there; I went to Maldon again – roads brought up; I went to Bridgewater – guess what, roads were brought up. All I can say to you is ‘Yep, what you’ve been talking about with your friends and family is spot-on because the roads are falling apart in Victoria.’

When I look at the map that is provided in this report, on page 14, it says ‘Road condition varies between regions’. I was pretty concerned – and I know we cannot use props in the chamber, but when I look at it, the dark shading means roads in very poor condition. Guess what, it is northern Victoria – the Loddon Mallee region and the Hume region – that has got the darkest colour. It says:

The proportion of roads rated poor and very poor was highest in the Loddon Mallee region.

So to all those people that I have been meeting with: you are spot-on – our roads are falling apart.

The report also found ‘a substantial and growing maintenance backlog’. It was interesting that the maintenance priorities for work with the department are not very clear. The department does not always clearly document why it prioritises sites for maintenance. The department does not make sure routine maintenance matches its priorities. It is clear from this investigation by VAGO that there are no clear targets or priorities for fixing our roads, yet we have known for such a long time that our roads are falling apart.

The Nationals in government will properly fund our roads through the fair share guarantee. We will establish Better Roads Victoria to rebuild the technical expertise that we need for road building and maintenance. We will allocate $5 billion to repair and rebuild Victoria’s roads. We will fix roads properly the first time, enforce tough standards and hold construction companies accountable. And we will stop the waste and invest in safer roads across Victoria, because for too long regional Victorians have been paying the price for the failures of this Labor government.