Allan govt slash major road works in favour of flood recovery, fail to provide any data on past financial year’s work
The Department of Transport has been unable to provide data on the past financial year’s flood recovery road works, despite blaming the maintenance for a $250m blowout to its target budget.
Victoria
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The Department of Transport has been unable to provide final figures on the amount of road that received flood recovery maintenance in the past financial year, despite blaming a $250m blowout on the works in its latest annual report.
The state government has consistently blamed repeated flooding and excessive rainfall over recent years for the state’s collapsing road network.
As a result, temporary flood recovery maintenance and strengthening works were prioritised over long-term and larger-scale road works, with resurfacing and rehabilitation slashed by 90 per cent across the state in the past financial year.
The Herald Sun intended to analyse how many roads received short-term repairs under the reprioritisation of funds compared to recent years.
But the analysis uncovered that the Department of Transport did not detail any of its flood recovery works — including how many potholes were filled or how much damaged road was temporarily patched — in its 2023-24 annual report, despite coming in $250m over budget to accommodate for these works.
In fact, it can be revealed the state government has never captured measures of its short-term repair works in its annual reporting on road asset management — only revealing metrics on larger-scale resurfacing and rehabilitation efforts.
The Department of Transport also could not provide the metrics on flood recovery maintenance works from the past financial year upon request, saying this data was still being collated. This is despite the Allan government citing “additional funding for flood recovery and maintenance works” as the reason for a $250m blowout to its road asset management, and despite all other 2023-24 performance metrics having already been published.
The findings mean the state government spent an additional $74.9m on its road assets in 2023-24 than it did two years prior in 2021-22, but appeared to repair a whopping 11.9 million fewer square metres of road, without listing its flood recovery road works.
Shadow minister for roads and road safety Danny O’Brien accused the government of “fudging the figures” in its reporting.
“We’ve been aware that the government is fudging the figures on road maintenance and, in particular, flood recovery funding for some years,” Mr O’Brien said.
“Labor is desperately trying to blame floods on the state of our roads and using them to hide the fact that not enough spending is occurring across the road network.”
The Department of Transport could only provide statistics on the 12 months after the October 2022 floods, when maintenance crews completed 1800km purely in flood recovery works. To put that in perspective, the maintenance programs typically repair between 1200km and 2000km in total in a 12-month period.
The state government has confirmed it will introduce a new performance measure to capture major patching works for the first time in its 2024-25 annual report.
The department said there was a major change to the amount of major asphalting repairs undertaken following the floods, and that’s why this data had never before been captured.
But Mr O’Brien said small-scale repairs should have always been included in the annual reports.
“It seems strange that the government is not reporting all of its road work activity for the sake of transparency, that Victorians should know what the government is actually spending our money on, or in this case, not spending our money on,” he said.
In another bungle, the Department of Transport also failed to provide targets for road repairs in its most recent annual report, which usually allows the public to weigh up the year’s work.
It did however list its target budget — $441.6m — despite the average spent on road maintenance since 2017-18 being significantly higher at $687.6m.
In no surprise when considering previous spends, the year’s road works came in well over budget at $692.3m.
The findings mean that while the Allan government cited flood recovery works for the blowout, the total spend was, in fact, well on par with the average of years dating back before the flooding events to 2017-18.
It comes as the Herald Sun reported that resurfacing and rehabilitation works had copped significant cuts across the state in the past financial year — down from 10 million square metres in 2022-23 to just one million square metres in 2023-24.
Further analysis of the data revealed Victoria’s roads went without even more dire maintenance cuts than originally believed — beginning long before floods lashed the state.
Nearly 17.5 million square metres of road was resealed or fully restored during the pandemic in 2020-21 — about 874 MCGs worth. Last year, that dropped to just 50 MCGs worth.
The state government expects long-term repairs should increase now that temporary flood recovery efforts have been rolled out.
The state government also recently announced a record $964m investment in road maintenance across the state from now until mid-2025 — the equivalent of $2.6m every day.
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