Upper house candidate Garry Kerr completed a listening tour of the south-west this week, outlining roads, coal-seam gas mining and fishing facilities as his main policy areas ahead of the November state election.

The Anglesea businessman said VicRoads regularly compiled data on regional roads, yet much of the information was not freely available in the public domain.

“You know we have bad roads when you can’t go a couple of kilometres without hearing a thud from your tyres,” Mr Kerr said.

“What this government and the opposition should do is back a policy of conducting a major review into regional roads — where accidents happen, the number of dangerous sections of roads and where damage to vehicles happens. Once you have that information, you can set aside funding for the right sections of roads to be resurfaced.” 

The minor party is set to announce its candidates for South West Coast and Polwarth in the coming weeks with Mr Kerr hoping to land the much-prized fifth spot in the Legislative Council.

“The thing that really annoys me the most about road funding is the state (government) has enough money to put up signs telling you to slow down but not enough to fix the problem itself,” Mr Kerr said.

“The reason why a lot of the information about roads isn’t out there is because the government would have to act on it and that would cost them millions upon millions.”

The state government has allocated more than $5 million to upgrade the Heywood-Woolsthorpe Road, following on from $15 million for the construction of Princes Highway overtaking lanes between Colac and Dartmoor.