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

I rise on a matter of serious concern to people in my electorate: the lack of road funding flowing to regional and rural Victoria, particularly to regional and rural western Victoria. We've heard the devastating news today that the government now is cutting road funding by 30 per cent. There are serious questions that need to be answered by reducing the commitment that the Commonwealth will make to Victorian road projects from eighty-twenty to fifty-fifty. Does that mean existing programs which have already been signed up to—for instance, for much-needed repairs to the Princes Highway—will or will not go ahead? What does it mean for the Western Highway? Once again, the funding arrangement was eighty-twenty. Now the government is saying it's going to pull its contribution down by 30 per cent to fifty-fifty, so does that mean the upgrades to the western highway continue or do not?

This is the time of year when road funding should be being applied to our roads because the spring, summer and autumn are when you fix the roads; it's too wet to do it in the winter. Just when we should be seeing all the road activity that we possibly can on our roads, as the death toll on country roads continues to climb, we're seeing complete inaction from both the federal Labor government and the state Labor government because of this inept review which has been undertaken by the infrastructure minister. The sad reality is that lives will be lost as a result of this inaction and now this serious cut to road funding right throughout regional and rural Victoria.

This impact is growing. Already we're hearing that subcontracting companies that do work on our road maintenance are losing serious amounts of money. We're hearing of people being laid off. The major contractors who do our roads are also suffering because of the lack of investment in our roads, losing staff, losing money—all at a time when our roads continue to deteriorate, all at a time when there is a complete lack of transparency around the conditions of our roads. We're still yet to hear from the government whether they will support the initiative to provide full transparency on the state of every road across this nation. It simply is not good enough.

We're seeing what is happening with the road toll in this nation. For the first time, it is starting to grow again. Now, the best thing all of us can do is support more investment into our roads. If you ask people in my community or right across rural and regional Australia, you will see that the No. 1 priority they have is roads because they understand how important it is to get them to and from work, to get their families to and from schools, to get their loved ones to netball or football on the weekends. You have to use the roads; there is no alternative. When it comes to transport—getting goods to and from market, getting goods to or from the saleyards—you need to use the roads. Yet there seems to be an absolute failure of understanding of how important roads are when it comes to the Albanese Labor government. They seem to think that you can have a review which is meant to last 90 days and ends up lasting over 150 days and then cut significant funds from the roads. 'Oh, nothing to see here.' There is everything to see here. Our roads are deteriorating. At a time when we should be doing the work which is needed right now, when the weather conditions allow us to undertake that work, nothing is happening because of this freeze on funding. Now, today, we hear of this 30 percent cut, which means that major upgrades to roads, like the Princes Highway and Western Highway, that need that investment are not going to occur. The sad reality is that it's going to be road users right across Western Victoria, right across my electorate, that will suffer as a result. It is simply not good enough, Albanese Labor Government.