Budget update reveals massive city road spending as south-west languishes

The December budget update showed the cost of the government's North East Link project had blown out to $26 billion, an increase of $10 billion from the last time the project was costed in 2016.

In May the government promoted a $6.6 billion road maintenance commitment it said would "future proof" the state's roads over the coming decade.

The government called this funding unprecedented, but the 10-year investment is just a quarter of the North East Link spend, and the $6.6 billion figure includes all road maintenance for the state, including metropolitan Melbourne, a network of 229,488 km of roads.

The Standard asked the government how much of the $6.6 billion would be allocated to regional roads. A spokesperson declined to give a breakdown, but said in 2023-24 more than half the maintenance funds would be spent in the regions.

"We're rebuilding, repairing and resurfacing hundreds of Victorian roads thanks to an investment of more than $770 million in maintaining Victoria's road assets this financial year with the majority of this funding to be spent in regional Victoria," the spokesperson said.

History suggests about 75 per cent of the $6.6 billion will go to the regions, in line with the percentage of the state road network that sits outside metro Melbourne. In the lead up to the 2022 election, then Roads Minister Ben Carroll said Labor had spent $3.5 billion on maintaining regional roads since 2014, about three quarters of the $4.65 billion statewide spend.

If that pattern holds, about $5 billion will be spent maintaining regional roads over the next 10 years.

Meanwhile, the December budget update showed the government plans to spend $5.7 billion on a 6.5km stretch of the Eastern Freeway alone. Premier Jacinta Allan, who oversaw the development of the North East Link Project for many years as Infrastructure Minister, said it was an essential piece of infrastructure.

"We had a choice about whether we don't proceed with getting this project right and leaving it for another government in 60 years' time, or we do this project once and do it right," Ms Allan said.

"That's the choice that we've made."

The government spokesperson said additional funding on top of the $6.6 billion would "continue to be provided to upgrade roads and intersections in regional Victoria". But the 2023-24 budget didn't allocate any funds for regional road upgrades, while the 2022-23 and 2021-22 budgets provided a total of $108.1 million over four years.

South West Coast MP Roma Britnell said the government was "no longer even attempting to provide the regions with their fair share of road funding".

Ms Britnell said the drastic funding imbalance was "especially insulting" given the dangerously poor state of Victoria's country roads.

In November the government revealed it would not be setting a regional road repair target for 2023-24 because of the "unprecedented damage" to country roads due to heavy rainfall.

The lack of certainty over regional road repairs in 2023-24 is made worse by the fact the government fell 25.6 per cent short of its regional repair target for 2022-23, leaving more than 3 million square metres of road surface unrepaired..

Stretches of the Princes Highway have had the speed limit permanently reduced because the road surface is so poor, and the south-west road toll has hit a 10-year high.

Ms Britnell said she felt like a broken record trying to alert the government to the dire state of the region's roads.

"They just blatantly ignore us," she said.

"What's worse, they are totally ignoring the safety issues. People are dying on country roads, and I know there are other factors, but I have no doubt the state of the roads is contributing."

On December 29 Roads Minister Melissa Horne put out a media release acknowledging the 296 people killed on Victorian roads in 2023, but said road safety was a "shared responsibility".

"The devastating road toll we've seen in Victoria this year has also been happening nationally and we need to do everything we can to drive down fatalities on our roads," Ms Horne said.

"Road trauma is a complex challenge and sadly the contributing factors are not new - speed, not wearing a seat belt, drink and drug driving, high speed country roads, less safe older cars, multi-passenger fatalities and increasing level of travel on our roads."

The release did not mention the condition of regional roads.