Secret data has revealed the dire state of the roads in western Victoria that’s putting lives at risk.
Hundreds of kilometres of roads throughout Wannon received the lowest safety rating of one or two stars by the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP).
Federal Member for Wannon Dan Tehan today said he was endorsing the Australian Automobile Association’s Data Saves Lives campaign, which calls on the Federal Government to require all states and territories to release this data as a condition of receiving their share of its annual $10 billion a year road budget.
Me Tehan was forced to use Freedom of Information laws to compel the Victorian Labor Government to hand over data about the poor quality of local roads.
“The data should be made public, and Australians should not have to use FOI laws to obtain it,” Mr Tehan said. “Since I was elected, I have been campaigning for more funding to improve our local roads. This data confirms that the state Labor Government has ignored Wannon, and that’s putting lives at risk.
“The majority of the money is going to Melbourne; we all know that. And Federal government funding is not fixing the problem because there is no accountability.”
“The Labor Government should publish this data for the whole of Victoria so that taxpayers and voters can see the quality of the roads in this state. Transparency will lead to accountability. The people of Wannon are rightly angry about the state of their roads.
“Death, trauma, and traffic congestion would all be significantly reduced if the Australian Government made data-driven road funding decisions instead of ad-hoc and potentially politically motivated decisions.
“If data is not made available to the Australian Government, commonwealth road infrastructure funding decisions will continue to be made in the backrooms of government and subject to the whims of politicians and the political cycle.’’
The Data Saves Lives campaign calls for the Commonwealth to use the National Partnership Agreement to make its road funding to states and territories contingent on releasing the data needed to analyse crash causes and establish effective policy responses.
Read more here: Roads with lowest safety ratings revealed in explosive report. Source: Herald Sun
