$1.47M ON BILLBOARDS AND BRANDING WON’T FIX POTHOLES
Bev McArthur MP, Member for Western Victoria Region, has condemned Regional Roads Victoria following the announcement that the agency spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on public relations, when the priority should be fixing the potholes on rural roads.
Documents released under Freedom of Information have revealed that in just the first six months of operation, Regional Roads Victoria spent approximately $1.47 million on promoting its own achievements. What achievements, you may well ask?
Included in the spend was an $800,000 advertising campaign on social media platforms, billboards, print and radio, as well as a further $191,000 on television commercials. Further costs included $27,000 on brand exploration and architecture, $168,920 on campaign creative assets, and $155,500 on brand concept and implementation/campaign creative concepts. The Victorian taxpayer also footed the bill for an $8,795 promotional wall for the RRV’s head office in Ballarat.
Meanwhile roads in regional and rural Victoria continue to remain chronically underfunded, often becoming so dilapidated that they pose a major safety risk to drivers. Indeed, 139 lives have been lost on the state’s regional roads in 2019, up 35% from the preceding year, clearly indicative of trends in a reduction in the quality of the state’s roads.
Quotes attributed to Bev McArthur MP:
“Rather than spending virtually $1.5 million on rebranding a new bureaucratic QUANGO, why doesn’t the Premier just fix our roads?”
“In what has been a shocking year for lives lost on our roads, this is not the time to waste money on spin and pretty pictures. Daniel Andrews needs to move outside the comfort of inner city Melbourne and see for himself the third world road conditions that everyone outside the tram tracks has to put up with."
"$1.47m would fix a lot of potholes, dangerous shoulders, and intersections. It might even help to prevent some of the road tragedies that occur all too often. We don’t need billboards and branding.”
“Bureaucratic waste and city-centrism is the credo of this Labor Government.”
“This is yet another example of the failure of the Andrews Government to recognise the needs of those outside the tram tracks who are demanding that our crumbling roads are fixed.”
16 December 2019