Politics & Council
13 July, 2026
Coalition commits $5 billion to fix country roads
THE Coalition today has announced it will create a $5 billion fund to be spent over four years to fix country roads if it wins November's state election.
Nationals candidate for Ripon Jo Armstrong said the $5 billion road maintenance fund announced would drastically improve road construction standards and deliver real relief for local drivers sick of dodging potholes on roads like the Calder, Western, Sunraysia and Pyrenees Highways.
She said residents in Ripon had been left to put up with roads that had been patched up rather than properly constructed.
"For over ten years the Burrumbeet to Beaufort section of the Western Highway has been proof of a job only half-done under Labor, patched up after every bit of rain, only to crumble again within weeks. It's the same story on the Sunraysia Highway near St Arnaud and the Pyrenees Highway into Maryborough. These aren't new problems; they're years of band-aid fixes catching up with us." Jo said.
“Ripon’s roads have crumbled to goat tracks while Labor pours billions into underused, corruption-plagued Big Build projects. If elected in November, The Nationals will stop the waste and end the corruption so we can build better and safer regional roads."
The fund will re-establish Better Roads Victoria as a standalone agency, rebuilding the engineering and technical expertise stripped out when Labor axed Regional Roads Victoria. A full audit of the state's roads will be conducted within six months, Mrs Armstrong said.
She said the announcement was part of the Nationals broader commitment to regional Victoria through the Fair Share Guarantee, which will direct 25 per cent of the state's infrastructure spending to the regions.
"Under Labor, regional Victoria gets less than 12 per cent of infrastructure spending despite making up a quarter of the state's population. That's not fair, and it's why our roads keep falling further behind. The Nationals in government will bring that number up to 25 per cent," Jo Armstrong said.
“People should have confidence their hard-earned taxes are reinvested into a safe, well-maintained regional road network across Ripon and I will fight to make sure this region finally gets its fair share, so our roads are fixed properly and stay fixed."