BILL Tilley says Victorian Labor walked away from country Victorian roads long before they secretly terminated its regional roads arm. The Member for Benambra was speaking after it was revealed that Regional Roads Victoria had been mothballed – its website removed and Facebook page inactive for a year. At the same time, the Victorian Government is now having to fill 700 potholes a day, about one pothole every 100 metres across the state each year. Mr Tilley said people in the North East were far too familiar with the desperate state of our roads. “None of this comes as a shock to anyone in the North East or outside metropolitan Melbourne,” he said. “The minister and her Labor village idiots can talk telephone numbers about road funding, but we all see the reality of potholes, crumbling bitumen, failed roads and temporary traffic lights. “This is the lived experience of a state that is broke. “We've got $41 billion of cost overruns on the big projects in Melbourne, and yet we've got goat tracks for our main roads.” Mr Tilley said excuses about climate change or flooding had worn thin with people who live in regional Victoria. “Labor has failed to learn from the past – this is the result of underinvestment in the integrity of these roads – the foundations, the shoulders and drainage,” he said. “The money Victorian Labor has cut from the road re-sealing budget this year alone would seal the Hume Freeway from Wodonga to Melbourne and back again. “We need more people working on the roads and less of Melbourne’s $200,000 a year cubicle dwellers whose only experience is driving a keyboard, not a motor vehicle.”
