Wednesday, 9 September 2026

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (16:45): It is quite impressive that we are still discussing, even today, the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office’s last report, revealing the secret Suburban Rail Loop tax, and already the next one has arrived. That SRL report revealed a genuine cover-up, something that only a handful of Labor ministers knew about and conspired to keep secret. Today’s VAGO report is equally damning, but in a very different way. There is barely a person in Victoria who is not already painfully aware of the shocking state of our roads. There are essentially two findings repeated in different words throughout the entire report: Labor is not spending enough money to maintain our roads, and just as importantly, Labor cannot properly manage the money it is spending.

You barely need to read beyond the headings of this report. On page 1, under ‘What we concluded’, the Auditor-General said:

The overall condition of Victoria’s state roads is deteriorating.

He said 48 per cent of the network was in poor or very poor condition in 2024, up from 39 per cent just three years earlier. Then he said, ‘Victoria has a large and growing road maintenance backlog’. I mean, we all know this, but the Auditor-General has put it in writing. He said:

The department has advised the government that funding is insufficient to maintain or improve the condition of state roads.

You should be hanging your heads in shame across the aisle there. That is the government’s own department telling Labor they are not giving it enough money to maintain the roads. Turn to page 7, and the Auditor-General helpfully listed the three central findings:

The proportion of roads in poor or very poor condition is increasing.

The department’s approach to maintenance has some gaps.

The department can improve its oversight of contractors.

On page 8 the report says, ‘State roads continue to deteriorate’. The gap between defects recorded and defects repaired more than doubled between January 2025 and June this year. Then there is another heading: ‘There is a substantial and growing maintenance backlog’. Then another: ‘The department has advised the government that funding is not sufficient’. On page 11 the entire section is headed ‘Condition of state roads’, and its opening words are ‘The condition of the state road network continues to worsen’. The report says:

Renewal spending is not keeping pace with deterioration and defects are appearing faster than they are repaired.

On page 17 we get another extraordinary heading: ‘Key issue: The department does not have meaningful targets’. The Auditor-General said there are ‘no government-endorsed targets for the “acceptable” condition of the network’. So Labor cannot even tell Victorians what condition it thinks their roads should be in. Page 22 is headed ‘Deciding maintenance priorities’. He said ‘the department does not always clearly document why it prioritises some sites over others’. He went on:

Fragmented information and systems … limit its ability to identify the most cost-effective maintenance …

On page 27 the report says ‘poor data limits maintenance decision-making’, and on page 30 it says ‘The department has limited assurance over the quality of works’. It is unsurprising, when page 26 tells us only one of four Victorian road maintenance contract holders has even given the department its methodology for prioritising repairs.

I mean, this is disgraceful. But the Liberal–National parties have a solution. We are going to spend $5 billion on the roads. I have just announced that every local, rural and regional council will get untied funding of $1.5 million each year so they can fix their local roads, which of course make up 60 per cent of the road network. By and large, local governments repair roads much better than our state operation. But between our funding to make sure we build roads better and maintain roads better and our funding for local councils to fix their local roads, we have the solution on the roads issue. Some in this chamber have just come to grips with what a pothole is. We have been talking about potholes that are craters for years. You have had an epiphany and have come to the party very late, but we are going to solve the problem. You have had 12 years and have done nothing, and the Auditor-General says exactly that.