A report from Victoria's auditor-general, tabled in parliament on Wednesday morning, has found the state's road network is crumbling faster than the government can repair it, the ABC reports. The audit examined more than 23,000 kilometres of state roads and found about 48 per cent of the network was in poor or very poor condition in 2024, up from 39 per cent in 2021.
The report found the government's current funding commitment falls short of the maintenance the network actually requires — a shortfall the auditor-general says has pushed the focus "more on reactive and safety-critical repairs rather than preventative works". The Department of Transport and Planning's own 2026–27 road maintenance business case estimated it would cost more than $3 billion per year to hold pavement condition at existing levels while replacing ageing assets. And the backlog is compounding: based on defect job records — potholes, and hazards such as structural failure — the gap between defects identified and defects fixed more than doubled between January 2025 and June 2026.
Regional Victoria carries the worst of it
State roads make up about 15 per cent of the Victorian network by length but carry most of the state's traffic, and around 82 per cent of them are in regional Victoria. The Loddon Mallee region fared worst, with 69.1 per cent of its state roads rated poor or very poor — and more than half rated very poor. The report found increasing road use is adding pressure, with growth expected to continue.
'I didn't need a report to tell me'
Newly appointed Roads Minister Paul Hamer said the government accepted the roads were not good enough, and promised to fix the way it deals with them if re-elected. "I didn't need a report to tell me the condition of our roads in Victoria need to be improved," Mr Hamer said. Late last month the government announced an extra $352 million to double the number of potholes fixed this year — money that comes on top of the $1.04 billion for road asset management in this year's budget, for a total of $1.39 billion. "That includes bringing road maintenance back in-house," he said. "It meets higher standards, it means more accountability, it means more transparency, and it means more local delivery and local expertise."
Mr Hamer would not be drawn on whether he would ask Premier Ben Carroll to boost funding. "We've had record investment over the last few years in each of those financial years, but we need to do more. We are not shying away from that."
Opposition roads spokesperson and Nationals leader Danny O'Brien said the findings were damning. "This is an indictment on the Labor government's inability to look after our roads, to maintain them properly," he said. The Coalition has promised $5 billion to fix the state's potholes, and would reinstate the $288 million Country Roads and Bridges Program — delivered over four years as funds for rural and regional councils to spend on repairs. "I believe if we actually do the preventative maintenance, we get on top of it after a couple of years, that will require less money in the longer run," Mr O'Brien said.
112,000 punctures
For the RACV, none of this was news. "It's no surprise for RACV that the state of the roads in Victoria is not good and probably not a surprise for most Victorian motorists," head of public policy James Williams said, pointing to years of under-investment in resurfacing with "a direct impact on both safety and productivity". The motoring body has logged a significant increase in pothole damage reports, recording 112,000 tyre punctures last year. Mr Williams said a key takeaway from the report was that repair decision-making sat with four major contractors outsourced by the government, not with the government or the department — and called for greater transparency about how the funding is spent.
The report's own arithmetic frames the election argument to come: $1.39 billion committed this year, more than $3 billion a year needed by the department's estimate — and a defect list growing faster than the crews can work through it.
