Country Victoria misses out on new roads funds
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Country Victoria misses out on new roads funds

While $1.8 billion has been poured into Melbourne roads this week, East Gippsland residents will continue their travels on crumbling and dangerous routes after the country roads budgets have been slashed. “It is disappointing that country areas right across Victoria have missed out on this funding while more money is poured into improving Melbourne,” Member for Gippsland East, Tim Bull, said. Mr Bull said since coming to Government, Labor had cut made cuts to the Road Asset Management Budget and Road Operation and Network Improvement Budget, which had reduced funding under these two programs by a whopping $307 million in the past two years. “On top of this it has also scrapped the Country Roads and Bridges Program, which provided $160 million to local councils to improve their roads.” Mr Bull said upgrades were desperately needed on a number of local roads right across the electorate and that he had raised this in Parliament and written to the Roads Minister and VicRoads on a number of occasions. “The Liberal-Nationals will always fight for a fair share of roads funding for regional Victoria and quite frankly we were delivering a lot more when in government,” he said. Mr Bull has recently started a petition on his website, encouraging the Government to reinstate the funding it cut when coming to office. “The petition is easy to access and takes less than 30 seconds to complete, and petitioners have the option of listing the specific roads they are concerned about.” The petition can be found at http://timbull.com.au/petitions. Thursday, November 10, 2016