News

Report estimates $3 billion a year needed for deteriorating roads

By Ashley Darling

Sep 9, 2026

State roads such as the Midland Hwy have shown a noticeable deterioration in recent years. Photo by Simon Ruppert

Spending on road repair and maintenance needs to triple to $3 billion a year, according to Maintaining Safe Roads, a new report from the Victorian Auditor-General.

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This level of funding would cover maintaining road conditions at their current level while replacing ageing infrastructure.

In recent years, annual funding for roads has risen from $900 million to $1 billion.

On August 30, the Victorian Government announced that it would provide an extra $352 million for roads this year as a one-off payment to double the number of potholes filled.

In July, the Coalition announced it would spend $5 billion over four years on roads, an increase of around $250 million per year.

Regional Cities Victoria has been campaigning for an extra $500 million per year.

The report also detailed the scope of deteriorating roads across Victoria.

In 2024, 48 per cent of state roads were in poor or very poor condition, compared to 39 per cent in 2021.

The gap between defects recorded and defects repaired has doubled from January 2025 to June 2026.

The Loddon Mallee region was identified as the worst area for remaining useful life of roads, with the Hume region performing second worst.

One key finding was that the government needed to improve oversight of contractors.

While the Department of Transport and Planning has defined standards, there is a lack of effectiveness in oversight, which means that the department cannot be confident that its standards are consistently met.

The report also found that the reasons for departures from the planned maintenance program were not always clearly documented.

Maintenance is increasingly focused on reactive and safety-critical repairs rather than preventative works.

Funding was identified as insufficient to maintain and improve the network.

Six recommendations were made, and all have been accepted by the government in full or in principle.

The recommendations are:

Improve public insight by updating public reporting using better metrics.
Track and publicly report maintenance backlogs.
Further define site selection criteria and establish a standard for documenting reasons for decisions that depart from the modelled program.
Improve co-ordination of maintenance and documentation of rationale.
Implement data collection of drainage assets and implement into maintenance planning.
Strengthen process to assure maintenance meets required standards.