Victorian Government hides rural and regional road spend

The Victorian Government is systematically paving over its regional road spend as the rural road toll hits 64. See the figures.

Poor maintenance has far more tragic impacts than just road blowouts and pot holes, as can be seen in the growing 2022 road toll.

The Victorian Government is systematically paving over details of its regional road spend by no longer publishing VicRoads annual reports, changing key maintenance measures and blurring its budget numbers.

VicRoads has been subsumed into the mega Department of Transport so its financials cannot be analysed. It is a similar story for Regional Roads Victoria, which the Opposition has argued is nothing more than a government “branding” exercise.

The Government has also changed its performance measures, from reporting the number of regional road kilometres maintained — 41,759km in 2019-20 — to the total area maintained as 73,327,000 square metres in 2020-21, making it impossible to compare the two measures, given varying road widths.

It comes as 64 Victorians have died on rural roads so far this year, compared to 46 at the same time last year, with an outcry from rural and regional communities who claim their roads are falling apart.

East Gippsland Nationals MP Tim Bull said some roadwork was disintegrating within months of being completed.

One major roads contractor told The Weekly Times “everywhere you go you have (table) drains that haven’t been cleaned in 20 years, so you get water sheeting … and seeping into the road subgrade (underlayer). Then (vehicle) axle loading pumps the pavement until the road blows out”.

Contractors say the failure to adequately to fund VicRoads maintenance crews means not only are clogged drains undermining adjoining roads, but cracks in the paving are not being sealed, exacerbating the deterioration.

Opposition roads spokeswoman Steph Ryan said the Government’s legacy on regional roads was “a hazardous mess of cuts to road safety and less funding”.

“It’s ‘dedicated’ Regional Roads Victoria department is nothing more than a branding exercise,” Ms Ryan said.

But a government spokeswoman said “the facts are clear, we are investing more than ever before in the state’s roads – keeping Victorians moving and providing safer and more reliable journeys”.

The Government also highlighted that when the Coalition was last in office, it’s average annual spend on road maintenance was just $493m – “leaving behind a legacy of cuts and closures,” the spokeswoman said.

Roads Minister Ben Carroll has dismissed the criticism, stating the Government had poured $780m into a statewide (city and country) “road maintenance blitz” and told a recent PAEC hearing the Opposition did not know how to read the budget papers.

The papers showed total road asset management funding across suburban and regional areas has been cut back from a Covid-stimulus high of $822.5m in 2020-21 to $605m this financial year, before being wound back to $592.7m in 2022-23.

Neither the state budget papers, nor the most recent Department of Transport annual report give a breakdown of how much of this maintenance funding is going to regional roads compared to Melbourne.

The DoT’s latest annual report does state “during 2020–21, Regional Roads Victoria improved more than 1800 kilometres of road”, across the 19,000km network under its control.

One of the few sources of independent reporting is the Better Roads Victoria trust account that was established in 1979 and into which previous governments have made co-contributions, plus pouring in all speed camera and on-the-spot fines.

Under the original Business Franchise (Protection Products) Act 1979 a third of the money flowing out of the BRV trust account must be spent on rural and regional roads.

But when Labor came to power it ceased making co-contributions to the trust and then drew out $1.2 billion to cover its election commitments and other unidentified projects.

In the space of two years Labor drained the trust account from the $1.1 billion it held in 2016-17 to $300,000 by 2018-19.

This has forced the Government to cut the BRV’s contribution to regional road funding, from a pre-2018 state election high of $399m to $184m in 2020-21.

Ms Ryan said “it’s little wonder our roads are falling apart when Labor has raided the trust account, set up to deliver better roads and stopped reporting key measures, leading to cuts in funding for road maintenance”.

Road Safety Funding has also been cut, with Gippsland Nationals MP Danny O’Brien questioning Mr Carroll at PAEC on why the 2022-23 budget papers show that while this year’s spend was meant to be $136.9m, the 2021-22 output was just $86.6m, with the 2022-23 investment wound back to $89.3m.

Mr Carroll responded by stating: “you’re not including the $34 billion we’re doing in making our roads safer and smoother for all Victorians”.

When asked how he came to such a sum, Mr Carroll said: “you’ve got to add up, do the maths, on different parts of the budget, to get to this figure”.