The Purnim chicken farmer regularly operates a farmer’s market stall in the Premier’s suburban electorate of Mulgrave.

He said there was a vast gap in road standards between Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and south-west Victoria.

“Looking for a pothole down in Daniel Andrews’ electorate is like a game of Where’s Wally?,” Mr Marsh said. “There’s smooth, un-potholed roads as far as the eye can see.

“The Princes Highway (in the Mulgrave area) is six lanes of beautiful smooth bitumen. We’ve barely got two lanes and it’s third-world stuff by comparison.”

Mr Marsh said south-west Victoria needed to take advantage of the publicity generated by the Shane Jacobson film Oddball- a movie focused on his advocacy of the protective powers of maremma dogs on Warrnambool’s Middle Island.

“This is a golden opportunity with Oddball going gangbusters at the box office,” Mr Marsh said.

“I want to highlight how bloody terrible the roads are down this way and the only way to do that is to elect someone who isn’t a cardboard cut-out politician. There are tourists from all over the country wanting to come to Warrnambool now that they’ve seen Oddball and they have to contend with our crap roads. We’ve been putting up with them for years.”

The independent candidate for the South West Coast by-election said a multi-million dollar upgrade of the Princes Highway was his top priority ahead of the October 31 poll. Mr Marsh has met Mr Andrews on several occasions and said he would raise his concerns at the next opportunity.