Victoria’s crumbling roads will receive a $5 billion funding boost that will remove 1 million potholes under the Coalition’s election promise to rebuild the state’s road repair program.
With less than five months to go before the state election, Opposition Leader Jess Wilson and Nationals leader Danny O’Brien will on Monday launch an election promise they say will increase Victoria’s road maintenance budget by 25 per cent over current spending levels.
As part of the policy, the Coalition will pledge to repair the worst potholes across the state, and the asphalt blitz will be managed by a new unit within the Department of Transport and Planning. Funding will also be earmarked for gutter cleaning, grass cutting and graffiti removal.
Ahead of the election, the Union is seeking to capitalize on growing anger in regional areas over deteriorating roads across the state, saying the crumbling network is a safety issue and a cost-of-life burden as drivers face costly repairs.
Wilson, who is visiting all 88 constituencies, said the state’s roads are full of dangerous potholes that cause damage to vehicles.
“Drivers should not be footing the bill for flat tyres, cracked rims and worse because Jacinta Allan and Labor can’t get the basics right,” Wilson said.
In 1999, rural voters swung strongly against the Union. Liberal premier Jeff Kennett was dumped at the election and Labor took eight seats across Victoria including Seymour, Bendigo East, Ripon and Ballarat East and West.
But after more than a decade in government, Labour’s popularity is on the wane, fueled by growing frustration in the region over dilapidated roads, overstretched services and long-term cost-of-living concerns.
In the May budget, the Allan government allocated $1 billion for road maintenance, which it said it would fundfix 200,000 holes.
The budget papers revealed, however, that the govt set the goal of placing a patch of 74,000 square meters of provincial roads this financial year, down from 95,000 square meters last year, and significantly less than the 566,000 square meters completed in 2024-25.
Labor claims these figures show a shift away from short-term patching and towards more permanent resurfacing and repair work, although the amount of resurfacing work planned for this financial year is also predicted to decrease.
The Coalition’s pledge comes as Victoria’s peak farming body last week launched a campaign to encourage regional drivers to document and report potholes and road hazards.
Victorian Federation of Farmers president Ryan Milgate said the reports would help show the extent of the state’s deteriorating roads, which he described as the “worst ever”.
“Many fall apart and some are outright death traps,” Milgate said.
Earlier this month, the police were forced to do just that lane closure on Hume Road Hume north of Seymour after a large pothole caused extensive tire damage to a number of vehicles.
The town of Whittlesea, which occupies the suburbs of Epping, Mernda and Whittlesea, has also discovered more than 1000 defects in its network of government-owned roads alone, blaming the Department of Transport and Planning for the deterioration of the situation.
As part of the Coalition’s election pledge, it will also demand greater accountability from departments and contractors through a review of building standards and maintenance contracts.
O’Brien, who is also the shadow minister for roads and road safety, last week stopped to help a P-plater who suffered tire damage after hitting a pothole on the Goulburn Valley Highway. He said the state’s roads have become “goat roads”.
“Winners are tired of half-hearted jobs that quickly fall apart,” O’Brien said.
He said regional areas received less than 12 percent of infrastructure spending, despite making up 25 percent of the state’s population.
The Coalition’s pledge comes a day after the Allan government unveiled its plan to crack down on unlicensed used car dealers and odometer hacking after research revealed nearly one in three used cars advertised online had their odometers back by at least 25,000 kilometres.
