The Victorian government has defended its roads maintenance spending following an Auditor General’s report that revealed severe deterioration across the state’s network.
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State Roads Minister Luke Donnellan said the report showed the Coalition chronically underfunded road maintenance when it was in government from 2010 to 2014.
“Only Labor is investing the money needed to keep people safe on our roads,” he said.
“Since coming to office, we’ve doubled spending on road maintenance.
“Over the next 12 months VicRoads will be doing more pavement work than it has done in decades.”
The Auditor Generals report said 80 per cent of the state’s roads would be in poor or very poor condition in 25 years.
An extra $260 million has been allocated by the government to repair 850 kilometres of roads across the state.
There was $43.66 million allocated for maintenance work across western Victoria in 2016-17 the financial year.
However central highlands councils remain unhappy with cuts made to the country roads and bridges program, which gave up to $1 million a year for road works in regional Victoria.
Indexation of the federal government’s financial assistance grant were also frozen under Tony Abbott, which has also reduced the amount of cash local government’s have to spend on maintenance.
Golden Plains Shire Council chief executive Rod Nicholls said the Auditor Generals report examined in detail how VicRoads maintains the arterial road network.
“Council is particularly pleased with VicRoads’ CEO’s response to the report, which clearly reinforces council’s long-held view that the maintenance of the state’s arterial road network has been severely underfunded for many years,” he said.
Western Victorian opposition MP Joshua Morris said the government’s poor roads funding was hurting productivity and endangering lives.
“It is an astounding accusation from a government who has removed roads funding from our 40 smallest councils and pork barrelled that money into the premiers own seat of Mulgrave,” he said.
VicRoads funding dropped from $1.656 billion in 2010-11 to $919.4 million in 2014-15. The figure increased to $1.39 billion for the 2015-16 financial year.