CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr WOOD (La Trobe) (16:22): The Dandenong Ranges is a beautiful place to live, but in summer we always have the fear of fires. Many roads right across the Dandenong Ranges are unsealed. Under the former, Liberal government we actually committed $150 million to Cardinia council to deliver 110 kilometres of sealed roads across 164 local roads.

This was an initiative put forward to me by CRAG21, a local group very much pressing that need. Why would people in the hills get second-rate roads compared to, say, a greenfield or new estate, where they get brand new roads with kerbs and channels? When you're living up in the hills—and I've lived up there pretty much all my life—and you live on an unsealed road, you have, obviously, more potholes than you could possibly imagine, which is hard when you're living in Victoria now.

There are more potholes there, and there's dust. But the big concern is bushfires, because, on many of these roads, the kerb or the drainage could be nearly a metre deep. So, if there's a fire and people are driving through smoke, it can be exceptionally dangerous.

I want to thank Paul Keen and his team at the Cockatoo Road Action Group for the 21st century, CRAG21, for tirelessly advocating on behalf of the hills. The reason I'm mentioning this today is that, sadly, when the Albanese government came to power, they withdrew $109 million from the project, leaving just $41 million from the original commitment. It went to the Suburban Rail Loop.

So it was diverted from unsealed roads in the hills to those ripping off and rorting the Big Build, as we call it—or the big rort, it should be called, when it came to the CFMEU. Now we've had even the Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, acknowledge that the money must be better spent and they're trying to find ways of saving money. First of all, to the Albanese government: you need to reinstate that funding.

It's so bad that so many local residents were planning on having their roads upgraded and working with Cardinia council, and the money was taken away. Where did it go? As I say, to the Suburban Rail Loop—the biggest rort around.

The money needs to be returned, and I call on the Albanese Labor government to return that money. Finally, I'll just say it was a matched election commitment when Bill Shorten was the leader, and, sadly, Labor broke their promise and reneged on it.