Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:58): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. The Department of Transport has revealed that between July 2019 and June 2020 it spent $120.7 million to install wire rope barriers on just 36 roads, excluding the additional maintenance costs, which are yet to be fully disclosed. According to the Auditor-General’s report Safety on Victoria’s Roads: Regional Road Barriers, most of the funding spent on barriers by the Department of Transport came from vehicle registrations. A vehicle registration fee is the largest levy paid by most Victorians to the state government annually, unless they run a business or purchase a house. Victorians must ask themselves: is their hefty car rego going to good use? The wire rope barrier program was rolled out in conjunction with the TAC’s Towards Zero strategy and action plan and was proclaimed to be a measure that would reduce the road toll. Victoria’s road toll has actually increased in recent years. In 2018, 213 lives were lost and in 2019, 266 lives were lost on Victorian roads. In 2020 the road toll was reduced; however, that was with 60 per cent less traffic on our roads.

Most regional Victorians will be able to provide you with a litany of better ways to use the near total expenditure on wire rope barriers of $1 billion and counting to lower our road toll. Widening or duplicating roads, improving pull-over areas, fixing potholes, removing trees or vegetation close to roadsides and a range of other solutions would be a far better use of our hard-earned taxpayer money. Instead the government has opted for dubious reasons for barriers that are being removed overseas for adding considerable cost to agricultural businesses, for causing huge difficulty for large transport, for entrapping wildlife and vegetation, for endangering motorcyclists and even for causing vehicles to flip on impact. Victorians’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars are being wasted on dodgy and overpriced infrastructure that has questionable benefit to improving the safety of motorists. The action I seek is for the minister to ensure the government ditches any future plans to install more wire rope barriers on Victorian roads.