Jacinta Allan has defended her government\u2019s record on regional road funding, telling reporters her government has invested record amounts to repair the state\u2019s road network.<\/p>\n
The Victorian Premier faced a grilling on the state of Victoria\u2019s regional roads on Monday after the state opposition pledged to invest $5 billion to fix an estimated 1 million potholes.<\/p>\n
Ms Allan acknowledged there had been \u201chuge damage\u201d caused by weather events in recent years, telling reporters she had \u201cmade the road network a priority\u201d since becoming premier.<\/p>\n
However, when asked whether she would match the Liberal and National parties’ $5 billion commitment, Ms Allan rejected the idea, claiming the commitment couldn\u2019t be trusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won’t be matching Liberal and One Nation cuts,\u201d she said, in an attempt to undermine the Liberal and National parties by tying them to One Nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re coming into an election, a Liberal – National Party outfit make big commitments and big promises, and then cut funding when they’re in government. We’ve seen this before, which is why this latest commitment just cannot be trusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to any commitment (they) are all about cuts, and there will be no matching of Liberal-One Nation cuts by my government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed on the issue, Ms Allan acknowledged that more work needed to be done to fix Victoria\u2019s regional roads.<\/p>\n
But Ms Allan said her government had already provided record funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe acknowledge that we have work to do, which is why every year for the past three years, we’ve invested $1 billion in road maintenance, and 70 per cent of that is dedicated to upgrading the roads in regional and rural Victoria,” she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the most funding that’s ever been allocated to the road network to do these works.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve got crews out there right now undertaking these works. But it’s a task that you’ve got to do year in, year out, and that’s exactly what we’ve done since I’ve been premier.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it is needed. It’s needed for a range of reasons: Additional traffic, population growth, the movement of trucks around the network, but also too the flooding events that have occurred in recent years have done a lot of damage to the road network.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Allan was also asked repeatedly what rating she would give Victoria\u2019s roads out of 10, but she refused to provide a direct answer, instead repeating that her government had provided $3 billion in funding over the past three years.<\/p>\n
Opposition pledged $5 billion for regional roads<\/p>\n
Victorian Opposition Leader Jess Wilson and Nationals leader Danny O\u2019Brien pledged to invest $5 billion to upgrade the state\u2019s regional roads during a visit to Warrnambool on Monday.<\/p>\n
The commitment represents a 25 per cent increase on current funding, with Ms Wilson describing the regional roads as \u201cdangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur roads are littered with dangerous potholes that are causing untold damage to vehicles – leaving motorists thousands of dollars out of pocket,” Ms Wilson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDrivers shouldn\u2019t be the ones footing the bill for blown tyres, cracked rims and worse because Jacinta Allan and Labor cannot get the basics right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr O’Brien said the funding would see an estimated 1 million potholes fixed, though he was unable to say how many potholes existed across the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cRoads have been falling apart all across Victoria and Victorians are fed-up with half-hearted patch up jobs that quickly fall apart. The Liberals and Nationals will finally address the roads crisis that so many Victorians have had to put up with,\u201d Mr O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n
The Nationals leader said the Labor government had allowed the state\u2019s roads to turn into \u201cgoats’ tracks\u201d while overseeing $40 billion in cost blowouts and $15 billion lost due to Big Build corruption.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will end the waste and stop the corruption so we can build better and safer roads,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cUnder Labor, our regions receive less than 12 per cent of infrastructure spending despite making up 25 per cent of the state\u2019s population.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis plan forms part of the Liberals and Nationals’ broader commitment to regional Victoria through the Fair Share Guarantee, which will see 25 per cent of the state’s infrastructure spending directed to our regions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacinta Allan has defended her government\u2019s record on regional road funding, telling reporters her government has invested record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[35873,2311,22,21,156,4806,5112,18325,10122,4993,10123,68,30145],"class_list":["post-49765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-2026-victorian-election","tag-allan","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-labor","tag-liberals","tag-nationals","tag-potholes","tag-regional","tag-roads","tag-rural","tag-victoria","tag-wilson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}