I’VE spent the majority of my life in regional Victoria and there’s nowhere I would rather live.
From the breathtaking Mallee skies in your part of the world, to our dramatic southern coastline and the volcanic landscapes around my hometown of Ballarat, we are truly spoilt for choice.
But living in these wide open spaces means we spend a good part of our lives in the car getting from place to place, often on country roads.
I can tell you first hand, work on our roads is never truly complete. Once the ribbon is cut and cars start rolling down our freeways and local roads, the next steps begin.
Our roads don’t just require maintenance, governments at every level need to invest in safety improvements and upgrades to keep up with growing communities.
When I became Minister for Infrastructure and Transport in 2022, I was shocked to discover that the former Coalition government had frozen maintenance funding to highways all the way back in 2013, effectively cutting the contribution that goes towards essential maintenance for roads that country people rely on like the Western Highway, the Sunraysia, the Calder and the Hume.
It slowed our progress on delivering for Victoria, and now we’re working hard to catch up.
I reversed the Liberal funding freeze, so that state governments have the funds to get on with day to day maintenance of our major roads including fixing potholes and resurfacing of our national highways.
That’s our major roads, but most of us spend our lives driving on local roads. Local governments provide essential services to our communities and often operate within tight budgets. That’s why the Albanese government has doubled the funding we provide to councils to maintain and repair their local road networks.
We’re also increasing funding to the Black Spots Program which targets locations where serious crashes have occurred or are at risk of occurring. As locals, we know which are the dangerous intersections and I encourage people to nominate an intersection under the program.
And we’ve established the Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program to assist councils with those bigger road and bridge projects they need additional financial support to deliver.
I know there’s no quick fix and there’s always more to do, but we are committed to getting it done and ensuring that every regional Victorian gets home safely.
