Despite repeated requests, no road recovery plan has been published.
On 30 August, the Victorian Government announced an additional $352 million for road maintenance, saying the money would flow immediately and setting a target of increasing pothole repairs from 250,000 to 500,000. Victorian Auditor-General’s Office
The Victorian Auditor-General’s report Maintaining State Roads, tabled on 9 September, indicated that 48 per cent of Victoria’s state-road network was in poor or very poor condition in 2024, compared with 39 per cent in 2021.
It also found that the road-maintenance backlog is growing, the network is deteriorating faster than repairs are being completed, and the gap between defects identified and defects repaired more than doubled between January 2025 and June 2026. Victorian Auditor-General’s Office.
On Monday I photographed a section of badly deteriorated road approximately 700 metres from the centre of Daylesford. I parked my custom motorcycle beside it to provide some scale. For anyone on two wheels, the problem is immediately obvious.
Over the past five weeks I have repeatedly asked the Victorian and State Governments: What is the plan for spending the money? I have also initiated a petition calling for a transparent, coordinated road-recovery plan which has now reached 5,000 signatures.
Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has responded to my correspondence and subsequently contacted both the Victorian Roads Minister and Hepburn Shire seeking information about what was being done.
But at the time of writing I have still received no substantive response from Roads Minister Paul Hamer and no response from Hepburn Shire CEO Janet Dore to my requests about the broader problem.
I still cannot point people to a single publicly available document showing which roads are being prioritised, how those priorities are determined, what work is underway, what comes next and when communities can expect it to happen.
