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

The Eurambeen-Streatham Road/Glenelg Highway intersection has seen, sadly, accidents occurring on a regular basis. Sadly, we've seen deaths occur, and we've seen dozens of accidents where there have been serious injuries. When we were in government, we allocated $2½ million to fix this intersection. We've given that money to the state government. The state government has committed to fixing the intersection. They're going to put additional lights in place and a roundabout. But the sad thing is that, like we've seen with a lot of projects right across Victoria, even though the planning has been done, action has stalled on fixing this very dangerous intersection. I call on the state government to get to work on this project. If they don't, the sad reality is that we're likely to see more accidents occurring.

I went and saw the infrastructure minister yesterday to raise this issue with her as to what is happening with this intersection. Her office has given me a commitment to report back as to why it seems that this project has stalled. We have seen something occur. In one passage into that intersection, we now have some orange flashing lights. They were put there some time ago. We are also seeing that, in some areas around where the roundabout would go, there has been some sort of planning. But, once again, all this seems to have come to a halt. I'm hopeful that the Victorian state government will see it as a priority to now make sure that the work on this intersection takes place and takes place immediately. The last thing my constituents want to see is the state government focusing entirely on the big build in Melbourne at the expense of our roads. Sadly, with a 95 per cent cut in the maintenance budget by the state government and a near half cutting by the Albanese Labor government in road maintenance, we're seeing that, but we cannot see major upgrades to an intersection like this, where we've seen dozens of accidents and fatalities, be held up again by the state government.