STUART Storr, managing director of Storr Transport in Toora, backed the view of Member for Gippsland South Danny O’Brien that the State Government continues to make the same promises year after year about road improvements but fails to deliver.
Mr Storr was scathing about the condition of South Gippsland Highway, saying it continues to cause expensive damage to the company’s trucks and costly downtime for repairs.
“It’s a joke,” he said of years of State Government claims of funded road improvements, adding, “If they had the money they would have fixed it, wouldn’t they?”
Mr Storr labelled the South Gippsland Highway as “slippery”, noting the road’s condition exacerbated by a recent fuel spill.
“Because there’s no metal on the road, it’s like a skating rink,” he said.
Truck repairs necessitated by potholes are “causing a lot of heartache”.
“I’ve never seen repairs so big; it’s horrible,” Mr Storr stressed.
That follows a press release on Tuesday, September 23, from the State Government headed ‘Better roads blitz rolls out across Victoria’.
“The Allan Labor Government is rolling out a major road blitz to rebuild, repair and resurface roads right across Victoria, backed by the largest single-year investment in road maintenance in the State’s history,” the release declared.
It highlighted the launch of the government’s $976 million road maintenance blitz by Minister for Roads and Road Safety Melissa Horne during an appearance in Kyneton.
“We’re investing nearly a billion dollars to rebuild and repair the roads that Victorians depend on every single day, from the highways connecting our major centres to the local roads that keep our communities moving,” Ms Horne said.
Victorian leader of The Nationals, Mr O’Brien, said he has looked back at announcements from previous years in relation to the State Government’s road maintenance program.
He pointed out that in 2024 the government said, ‘Road maintenance blitz revs up across regional Victoria’, having stated the previous year, ‘Road maintenance blitz kicks off across regional Victoria’.
The message in 2022 was, ‘Road maintenance blitz rolls out across regional Victoria’, the previous year the announcement was ‘Road maintenance season goes above and beyond’.
Following a couple more examples, Mr O’Brien said, “So, for all these years we’ve been having road maintenance blitzes,” asking people whether they reckon the government has actually done anything to fix the roads.
“I don’t think we can believe this year’s, let alone the past 10 years,” he added.
Mr Storr summed up what he perceives as the State Government’s view of those beyond the big smoke.
“They don’t care about the country,” he concluded.