MEDIA RELEASE

Family First's Jane Foreman says a Herald Sun exposé revealing Victoria quietly shelved its hardest road repairs while spruiking a “record” maintenance blitz proves exactly what she has said since her own car was wrecked by a pothole in July: Labor is counting Band-Aid fixes as if they were brain surgery, while the roads doing real damage to real cars are left to rot.

Mrs Foreman says budget papers quietly admitted the then-Allan Government's claim to have smashed its 2025-26 road maintenance target by 25 per cent — resurfacing and patching 4.5 million square metres against a projected 3.6 million — only stacked up because it postponed the complex, structural repairs our worst roads actually need. Extensive works requiring both pavement and surface layers to be replaced were “reprioritised as future rehabilitation projects,” with no completion date set and no list of affected roads ever released, while the savings were redirected into an extra 867,000 square metres of quicker regional patch jobs and 61,000 square metres in Melbourne's outer suburbs.

It's a Band-Aid counted as brain surgery. Cheap surface patches are lumped into the same tally as major structural rehabilitation, so a shrinking repair program can be dressed up as a record-breaking one — even as the 2026-27 target of 3.7 million square metres falls further behind this year's 4.5 million, and a fraction of the 14 million square metres delivered before the pandemic. Regional Victoria, which the Carroll Government insists gets 70 per cent of its “record” $1.04 billion road budget, will cop a 20 per cent cut to resurfacing and a 22 per cent cut to patching.

“This is the oldest trick in the political playbook: count a Band-Aid the same as brain surgery, and suddenly you're smashing targets,” said Mrs Foreman.

“Labor dodged the hard, structural repairs our worst roads are crying out for and flooded the ledger with cheap patch jobs instead, so it could stand up and boast about beating its target by 25 per cent. The complex repairs get filed away with no completion date and no public list, so nobody outside government can check the trick for themselves.”

“Premier Carroll needs to explain why the roads doing that kind of damage are being deliberately left to deteriorate for longer. Victorians are handed a rebate on rego with one hand and Labor pockets the savings on real repairs with the other. Families deserve an honest ledger and roads that are actually safe, not a spreadsheet trick dressed up as a record.”

Family First is calling on Premier Ben Carroll and Roads Minister Paul Hamer to release the full list of roads whose complex rehabilitation has been “reprioritised,” set firm completion dates for every deferred project, and stop counting quick patch jobs and major structural rebuilds as if they were interchangeable in the government's public targets.

Mrs Foreman says the pothole saga — from the 98 per cent compensation rejection rate she exposed to this Band-Aid-as-brain-surgery accounting trick — is further proof Victoria needs Family First's genuinely independent voice holding this government to account in the Legislative Council after November, because Victorian families are paying for roads that never get properly fixed and cars that never get properly compensated.