Media Releases

Last week in Parliament, Member for Swan Hill Peter Walsh raised the issue of the state of the Birchip-Sea Lake Road.

“This road is an absolute disgrace,” Mr Walsh said.

“Almost 12 months ago VicRoads erected large, red ‘Slow Down’ signs around a particularly bad section and painted identification marks on the road surface indicating that works were imminent but nothing has been done since then.

“This section of road just north of Birchip is extremely dangerous and even with the speed restricted to 80kmh, passengers in a motor car can find themselves being thrown violently around.

“The impact in a large B-double truck travelling along the route is magnified immeasurably,” he said.

“Traffic along this road increases markedly at this time of the year because of harvest and the school holidays starting in a couple of weeks.

“The risk of a serious accident, especially to unwary visitors to the region, has obviously not been considered by VicRoads in their works schedule,” Mr Walsh said.

“Unfortunately, this works schedule is severely hampered by the lack of funding provided for country roads maintenance by the Brumby Government.

“In the 2009-10 budget, the State Labor Government reduced funding for resurfacing of country roads by nearly 10%,” he said.

“As the Liberal-Nationals Coalition has continually said ‘If you invest in country roads, you save country lives’.

“If the Brumby Government was really serious about reducing the country road toll they would provide funds so that dangerous sections of road such as this Birchip-Sea Lake section could be maintained appropriately,” Mr Walsh said.