Last week Infrastructure Victoria, the government’s hand-picked advisory group, recommended spending more money on road maintenance and upgrades in regional areas, something the good people of my electorate have been screaming for for months. There are no excuses now: the government is flush with cash from the port lease and now its own advisers are recommending spending extra money on rural and regional roads.
Everywhere I go people tell me how bad the roads are and that they need to be fixed before someone is killed. Last week, following weeks of heavy rain, some school bus routes in the Glenelg shire were cancelled because the roads were too dangerous to drive on. The Glenelg Shire Council has released a third video showing how deteriorated its road network is. These are roads leading to the port of Portland, from where 10 per cent of the state’s GDP is exported. This is not just a South-West Coast issue; this is a Victorian issue. If the roads fail and products cannot get to port, the state’s bottom line will take a hit. It now seems the only people not listening to the pleas to fix our roads are the Premier and the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. Now that you have the money and your experts are telling you it is needed, what is stopping you?
