Audit confirms what South Gippsland already knew about its roads

GIPPSLAND South MP Danny O’Brien says a damning Auditor-General’s report has confirmed what South Gippsland councillors were saying last month when they unanimously declared the region’s state roads beyond a joke.

Mayor Nathan Hersey used the phrase at the August 19 meeting as councillors backed a motion to take local road conditions to the Municipal Association of Victoria State Council in October.

The Maintaining State Roads report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday examined more than 23,000 kilometres of road and found 48 per cent of the network was in poor or very poor condition in 2024, up from 39 per cent in 2021.

About 82 per cent of the state road network sits in regional Victoria, and the report found the worst of the damage is out here rather than in Melbourne.

It is the second warning to land on local roads this year, after the RACV named the Bass, South Gippsland and Strzelecki highways among the 52 most dangerous regional road sections in the state in June.

Mr O’Brien, who is Shadow Roads Minister and leader of the State Nationals, called the report a devastating indictment of more than a decade of neglect.

“Victorians already know our roads are an appalling mess but the Auditor-General has now revealed why,” Mr O’Brien said.

He has spent much of the year on the issue, filming himself measuring the depth of a pothole in July when the Coalition launched its plan to fill a million of them, then telling Gippsland farmers days later the repairs this time would last.

The Coalition has promised $5 billion for road maintenance over four years and would reinstate the $288 million Country Roads and Bridges Program that hands money directly to rural councils.

Mr O’Brien accused Premier Ben Carroll of cutting $214 million from the maintenance budget over two years while he held the roads portfolio between 2020 and 2022.

Newly appointed Roads Minister Paul Hamer did not argue the finding, saying he had not needed a report to tell him the roads needed work.

“We are not shying away from that,” Mr Hamer said.

He pointed to an extra $352 million announced late last month to double the number of potholes filled this year and bring maintenance back in-house, on top of the $1.04 billion in this year’s budget for road asset management.

Mr Hamer would not say whether he would ask Premier Carroll for more.

The report found that money is still not enough, that the shortfall had pushed crews into reactive and safety-critical patching rather than preventative work, and that the gap between defects recorded and defects repaired more than doubled between January 2025 and June 2026.

The Department of Transport and Planning has told the government it would cost more than $3 billion a year just to hold pavement condition where it is while replacing ageing assets.

Victorian Farmers Federation president Ryan Milgate said the findings would surprise nobody outside Melbourne.

“It won’t come as a surprise to anyone living in regional Victoria,” Mr Milgate said.

He said farmers drove these roads every day and were watching the network fall apart faster than it was being repaired, and that ratepayers were paying twice when poor-quality work had to be redone.

RACV head of public policy James Williams said members had logged 112,000 tyre punctures last year, and that repair decisions were being made by four outsourced contractors rather than the department.

Mr Milgate said the election was the moment to force commitments out of every side, and the VFF is asking regional road users to sign its regional roads pledge at vff.org.au/advocacy/campaign/fix-our-crumbling-roads before Victorians vote on November 28.