In the last two years, the Federal Labor Government have allowed the national road network to fall into disrepair with billions of dollars in funding cuts and delays.
The maintenance budget for all country roads in Victoria has also been cut by two thirds by the State Labor Government.
From 1 January through to 2 October this year, 213 lives were lost on Victorian roads [1]. More than half of these fatalities occurred on rural roads despite metropolitan Melbourne accounting for approximately 75% of Victoria’s population [2].
I have delivered well over $1 billion of federal funding to the Victorian State Government to maintain Wannon’s road and rail infrastructure yet it is hard to see where all this funding has gone.
The answer is obvious – to Melbourne’s Suburban Rail Loop (SLR), sadly.
The SLR is costing hundreds of billions of dollars to build and operate. With each new report issued by the Allan Labor Government, the projected cost goes up.
The safety of rural and regional drivers is being compromised to fund the SLR which has already sent the state into a level of debt that will be shouldered by Victorian taxpayers for decades to come.
I am committed to lifting federal government funding for our roads again and demanding they be built and repaired properly.
In addition, I believe that one of the things we have to do is use local government more to fix our roads, whether they be roads of national significance such as the Western Highway or state government roads.
Local government contractors have been shown to do a far superior job because the work is carried out by locals who have to drive on the roads themselves.
It has been 16 years since the planning started to duplicate the Western Highway between Ararat and Buangor and around four years since work stopped on the duplication. And in that time more money has been poured into extra studies and paying for 24-hour security guards.
In the past decade there have been 160 car crashes and 18 deaths along the highway.
Enough is enough – it is time for the Allan and the Albanese governments to simply get on and duplicate the road. The people in Ararat who drive on the Western Highway deserve better.
[1] www.tac.vic.gov.au
[2] www.planning.vic.gov.au
Published in the Ararat Advocate
