At a press conference to celebrate the sold-out NFL match played at Melbourne’s MCG on Friday, the Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, was heckled on one issue. No matter where you’re driving in Victoria – be it a rural road, regional freeway or an inner-city street – you’re bound to encounter one. Then comes the split-second decision: swerve into another lane, or power through and hope your tyres survive the impact?
For regional Victorians it has been an issue for years. In 2024, the National party began collating images for its “Potholes for All Seasons” calendar, which was distributed to MPs at state parliament last year. But now potholes have become so omnipresent they could become the defining symbol of the Victorian election in November.
At the Nepean byelection in May, the opposition leader, Jess Wilson, and her successful candidate, Anthony Marsh, made it a central issue of the campaign – going so far as to fill a pothole themselves, prompting an investigation by the transport department. The headlines have kept coming. In July, the ABC reported that seven cars were forced off the Calder Freeway near Gisborne due to tyre damage from potholes.
In August, the Herald Sun reported a dismal 23 Victorian drivers had received compensation from the Transport Accident Commission for pothole damage over the last two years – despite thousands of complaints. AI-generated ads for the political lobby group Fix Victoria feature potholes prominently. On Thursday, the group stood outside Parliament station handing out bumper stickers that read: “Not drunk, avoiding potholes”.
At the same time, the Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall was telling reporters they had been “more claims for tyres and rim blowouts” in Victoria than other states, because of potholes. An auditor general report tabled in state parliament on Wednesday examined more than 23,000km of Victorian roads and found almost half (48%) were rated in poor or very poor condition. It also found they were deteriorating faster than the government could repair them: the gap between the number of road defects recorded and those repaired doubled between January 2025 and June 2026.
According to the auditor general, the Department of Transport told the government before the May budget it needed $3bn a year to maintain road pavement at existing levels while replacing ageing assets. But the government allocated only $1.04bn in the budget for 2026-27. That same financial year, it is forecast to spend $8.9bn on interest payments on state debt.
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