Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to be able to rise today and say that common sense has prevailed. It's not very often that I am able to say in this chamber that common sense has prevailed under this Albanese Labor government, but for the first time in a long time it has. Do you know why? It's because—the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government is here, and I'm pleased that she's here—the government made the commonsense decision to say, 'We're not going ahead with reducing speed limits on regional and rural roads back to 80 kilometres per hour or back to 70 kilometres per hour.' I've got to say the coalition has advocated strongly against this decision, and I recognise the member for Barker, who has been campaigning along with me on road funding for the last four or five years because, sadly, it has been cut under this Albanese Labor government. At last we have seen some success, because the minister for infrastructure has said she's not going ahead with this harebrained idea to cut the speed limit back down to 70 kilometres per hour or 80 kilometres per hour.

We now need to see the Albanese Labor government fix the roads. They've made the decision that they will not cut speed limits, but now they need to fix them. I've got a few places—and, luckily, the minister is here—where I can suggest that they start in my electorate. The Princes Highway—we put in $60 million to fix the piece of road between Warrnambool and Port Fairy. They did the job, but they only half did the job. Go back. Do the job properly. That will make my constituents in Port Fairy and Warrnambool very happy.

There's also the Western Highway. The Western Highway runs past Ballarat to Beaufort and then onto Stawell. Fix that. Fix the duplication between Beauford and Ararat. Fix that, and that will make my constituents incredibly happy. There are numerous more roads which we'd like to see extra funding go into. I'm glad that the minister's here, because she's hearing directly from my constituents as to what needs to happen. People's cars are being damaged. The potholes have got worse and worse. Instead of the Prime Minister being in Melbourne announcing billions and billions of dollars for the Suburban Rail Loop, fix the existing infrastructure. Why would you spend billions on these projects when you're existing infrastructure is deteriorating before your eyes? Minister, you've got a big job, but at least you saw common sense on not reducing speed limits.

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