Rural roads: TAC stripped of half its funding, as toll soars

The Traffic Accident Commission has been stripped of half its funding to help the Victorian Government fund $6 billion of rail crossing removals, while the rural toll soars.

Falling apart: Crumbling rural roads in southwest Victoria.

THE Victorian Government has stripped the Traffic Accident Commission of revenue to help fund $6 billion of rail crossing removals, while spending just $425 million on country road maintenance as the rural toll soars.

Treasurer Tim Pallas has taken $2.87 billion from the Victoria’s Traffic Accident Commission, half the revenue it earns from motor vehicle registrations.

Meanwhile the Government has allocated $425 million to rural road maintenance and committed just $121 million to the TAC’s Towards Zero Road Safety Strategy, despite the country road toll soaring to 84, compared to 47 deaths recorded by this time last year.

The TAC’s last annual report shows it had a $433,109 deficit in 2017-18, which is set to blow out even further as the Government takes $890 million of the Commission’s net premium revenue in 2019-20, $982 million in 2020-21 and $1 billion in 2021-22.

Details of the $2.87 billion raid on the TAC were buried in the budget papers but seized upon by Opposition leader and former Victorian Treasurer Michael O’Brien, who said the TAC money could be used to “fix unsafe roads or reduce TAC premiums for struggling families instead of propping up Labor’s poor economic management”.

In parliament last week Mr O’Brien asked the Treasurer, “with the road toll at a 14-year high, with 400 000 fewer roadside breath tests in the next financial year, how can this treasurer be so reckless as to tear $2.9 billion out of the TAC to prop up his failing bottom line?”

Mr Pallas said, “I make it clear that this Government will continue to insist upon the TAC performing a statutory remit (payment to the government) consistent with its obligations”.

But while the TAC has made regular payments to the Government in the past, last year’s budget showed Mr Pallas originally intended to take $1.3 billion from the TAC over the next three years, not $2.87 billion as detailed in last week’s budget.

Opposition rural roads spokeswoman Roma Britnell said Victoria’s crumbling regional roads were “costing precious lives” and the Government was “not providing the funding needed to build these roads urgently”.