Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a great honour to be able to second this motion by the member for Barker. I thank him for the cooperation in working to put this motion to this place, because he knows and understands, as a neighbour of mine, how important road funding is to regional and rural Australia—in particular, to his electorate, the electorate of Barker, and to my electorate, the electorate of Wannon. This data sadly speaks for itself, with 1,300 lives lost on Australian roads in 2024. Think of the impact that that has had on those families, the friends of those people and local communities right across Australia. This is something that we have to address. The last four years have seen the road toll go up each and every year. We haven't seen that since before the introduction of seat belts. We really need to see action from the government now. We need to see it from the Victorian state Labor government as well. We cannot see more lives continue to be lost on our roads, rather than less.

What do we need to do to make sure that we turn this around? To start with, we need state governments—and we need the Victorian state government—to release the Australian Road Assessment Program data, which sets out what the rating is, from one to five, for every road across every state and territory. I was able to get this information, dating back to 2014, through a freedom of information request. That's what it took to get this information for Victorian roads. Why won't the state Labor government just release that data? If it did, we would know where we need to immediately fund our regional and rural roads in particular. If we know what the star rating is, we know where we need to put the funds towards. I call on the Victorian state government and the Albanese Labor government to require that that information be released every year so we know what is occurring with our road infrastructure and where we need to put urgent effort in to make sure that our roads are safe for people to travel on.

We also need the Albanese Labor government to immediately reverse its cuts to our roads—over $80 million worth of cuts to roads in Wannon. It's unconscionable. We need more funding, not less. And we also need the Victorian state Labor government to put maintenance funding back into our roads. Don't cut road maintenance funding at this time. Put more maintenance funding back into our roads. How could they do it? They could act immediately if they wanted to. They've got their priorities wrong. We've seen all of this money go into the Suburban Rail Loop. The Albanese Labor government has set aside $2.2 billion to go into theSuburban Rail Loop.

I saw, on the front page of the Herald Sun today, that the Victorian state Labor government, due to the walloping they've had in the polls, are thinking about changing their priorities. Well, stop thinking about it and just do it. Look at fixing your existing infrastructure—in particular, your existing road infrastructure, which is declining day by day because you're not putting the investment into it that is needed.

You only have to drive our roads to see the urgent attention that is needed. I say this to Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, and I say this to the Premier of Victoria: just hop in your car and do what I do on a daily basis and drive around my electorate. You'd see straightaway that there is a need for more investment, not for cutting investment. Not only that; you need to ensure your maintenance program holds up. In Victoria, we used to maintain our roads by repairing and resurfacing them every 13 years. Under this Victorian state Labor government and the cuts to funding by the federal Labor government, we'll be lucky to do that over the next 60 years. Let's get attention to our road network now. That's why I'm proud to second this motion.

See this speech in context