It is unsurprising, given how unfavourably Hockey’s first budget was received, but that shouldn’t detract from the set of numbers scheduled to be handed down a week before in Melbourne.

Unlike Hockey, state Treasurer Tim Pallas is not a household name and his first real financial test has received little scrutiny amid the fallout from the cancelled East West Link.

The aborted metropolitan road project will blow a sizeable hole in the state’s budget no matter how much Premier Daniel Andrews tries to explain it away.

But south-west motorists will be more focused on road projects in the Western District and whether the new state government will allocate any funding to the battling Princes Highway.

Transport experts at the RACV have identified the Rosebrook-Illowa section of the Princes Highway as substandard, along with the stretch between Codrington and Yambuk.

Also lumped in the poor performer category are sections through the Stony Rises near Pirron Yallock and around the Bolwarra-Allestree district.

This will come as no surprise to most of the region’s residents. 

Some would add their own bitumen bugbears to the list, including the Hopkins Highway and Cobden-Warrnambool Road.

The new state government committed little in the way of funding to the region’s roads but that does not mean it can’t allocate cash to address this long-running problem.

State Roads Minister Luke Donnellan is well aware of the problems south-west motorists face. 

He has previously met with Roads to Ruin campaign director Jody Fry and driven along some of our most potholed highways while in opposition.

Mr Andrews and Mr Donnellan need to visit the region and meet with civic leaders to tackle this problem head on. 

Inertia and inactivity is not an option when driver safety is on the line.