Press conference - Buangor, Victoria

CATHERINE KING - MINISTER FOR INFRASTRUCTURE, TRANSPORT, REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT: [...] Well, we're here in Buangor today, but we're announcing the Victorian recipients of the Level Crossing Upgrade program. There are 32 projects right the way across the state, the state of Victoria, all of them in regional Victoria, because we know across Australia, there's over 23,000 level crossings, and it's where this interacts with trains and cars and trucks together, we know they are the areas where people are at their most vulnerable. Train drivers and passengers are at their most vulnerable, and we want to make those safer. So today, the 32 regional level crossings across Victoria, $54 million a shared commitment between the Allan and Albanese Labor governments. The projects are funded under this program are the sort of lower cost but high priority areas. They've been chosen because there is a higher likelihood of an accident occurring, we know we're seeing more frequency of train services. Thank you very much to the Victorian Government for that.

Across Ararat and Pyrenees council areas, there are eight sites receiving over $14 million in funding. And as I said, there's, such as some of them are passive already, and they'll be receiving boom gates and also signalling approaches as well. And this is a really important program that we've been rolling out across the country, and it's great to be able to do that here today.

I'm also in Victoria, announcing the recipients of the Safer Local Roads and Infrastructure Program. This is a program where we've increased money to local councils to ensure that they are able to build some of the more costly roads, but really to upgrade those. And there are roads across, again, regional Victoria, from Swan Hill to Leongatha and two projects in Yarriambiack, which is a terrific community, and also one in the greater Shepparton area, as well as two projects that you'll see in the Budget on budget night across the Princes Highway, both in Lakes Entrance and Beaconsfield. Again, that Safer Local Roads is all part of the Labor Government's commitment to actually increasing funding for regional roads.

What we've done since we've came to office is we've increased, doubled Roads to Recovery funding for every single Council, not just select councils using colour coded spreadsheets, every council is receiving double the amount of money. We've reversed the cuts to road maintenance funding. It was pretty shocking to me when we came to office that the Liberal Party had cut road maintenance funding for our national highways, and that was a significant cut. We have not only re-indexed the road maintenance funding, but we've backdated it to make sure we actually filled the hole that that cut had left. So you're seeing that work, then you've seen the Safer Local Roads program, the Level Crossing Upgrade program, and as well, as I said, The Black Spot Road program. So there's been significantly more money put into those things. All of that really directed to improving our regional country roads. I'll hand over to Martha and see if we've got any questions.

MARTHA HAYLETT – VICTORIAN MEMBER FOR RIPON: Perfect. Thank you so much, Minister King, and thank you for being here in Buangor today. To have $14 million just across the Ararat and Pyrenees Shires is huge for our region. So, we know that we're adding more weekend services on the Ararat line. We're increasing that frequency of trains, and we need to make sure that the safety of the level crossings and the pedestrian crossings are much safer. So, the fact that we're going to have boom gates and much higher safety is a win, not just for the people on the trains, but also people driving on our rural and regional roads. So, this is what we also can achieve when we have a genuine partner in Canberra. And it's fantastic to be working with the Albanese Labor Government on this project. So, this has had some state government funding as well, and we've been able to do this together. So, it's a big, big win for our region, and we'll just make our roads and our rail even safer.

JOURNALIST: Catherine, this isn't the first announcement along here. There's three projects underway in Beaufort at the moment, so you're spending a fair bit of money on this particular line.

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well, again, really important. We know, particularly, you know, we want to get upgrades and improvements to rail and the passenger experience, but particularly, we also want to make sure it's safer for regional communities. We know that level crossings are the one place where you do have that interaction between, if you're a truck driver - their workplace, if you're a train driver - the train driver's workplace, and we know we see too many regional Australians injured, or lose their lives in level rail crossing accidents. As I said, there's 23,000 of them across the country. We can't remove all of them. We just simply can't. It would be too costly to do that, but what we can do is make all of them safer, and that means better signalling, better opportunities for people to know when a train is coming. And on this particular area, when we've seen increase in trains frequency, increase in passenger numbers using rail, we've really got to do something, and they've been chosen to make sure you know these are the areas where the most accidents likely to happen.

JOURNALIST: Are all of these dedicated crossings getting boom gates?

CATHERINE KING: It'll be a mix. So some, some will have just signalling in the way that you've seen in this passive crossing here. Some will have the boom gates put in. But each of them are substantial commitments. Most of them are in the over the $1 million mark. So, there's quite a substantial amount you can do for that.

JOURNALIST: Is some of the money for signalling as well?

CATHERINE KING: Some of it is for what you do, you put on the track. There's a, I don't know the name of it, but it says it provides the opportunity for signal to then connect to the light. So it's actually a box that goes on the train, but the engineers and people who know trains will tell you about what that looks like. It's called an axel something or other [laughs]

JOURNALIST: I don't know either. [all laugh] Is this something the state government's been wanting to work in partnership for a while?

CATHERINE KING: Yes, so in particular, here in Victoria, we have a lot of level crossings. It's been a, you know, his history of our fabulous rail that we have in the state of Victoria means that we've got substantial number of level rail crossings. I don't know if we've got more than any other state. I'd have to check that fact. But I certainly think, you know, the history of our state sees that happen. So the Victorian Government has helped us choose the sites they know, obviously the frequency of their passenger and freight services and other roads that are busy as well. So this has been a true partnership between the two of us to really get these crossings improved. So 32 of them. We've still got more to do, but that's a pretty good batch for Ararat and Pyrenees Shires.

JOURNALIST: And when's this likely to be rolled out Catherine?

CATHERINE KING: So the money's available now. The projects have been identified, so it'll be rolled out this year.

JOURNALIST: Yeah, and Martha, you'd be very happy with the new timetables out, with extra trains?

MARTHA HAYLETT: Exactly! And we've got some later night services as well. And it's going to be really, a real benefit for especially those weekend passengers, uh, they'll be able to go, go down to Melbourne, go see a show, see some of the footy, and then come back to Ararat. So I want to thank everyone locally in our at who contacted me and pushed me on that one, and we've been able to get some, some good wins on that.

JOURNALIST: Was there much public feedback?

MARTHA HAYLETT: A lot! Yeah, so,

JOURNALIST: I tried to help…

MARTHA HAYLETT: And from the Ararat Advocate! So a lot of people contacting me, calling me, emailing me, and they still are. So there's lots of happy feedback about the fact that we've got some later night services on the weekend.

JOURNALIST: And I think the timetable comes in, you know, about a month's time, doesn't it?

MARTHA HAYLETT: Yes, exactly, yeah. So it'll kick in very soon, mid next month, and be fantastic. So we've got two additional services on each day. So really, technically eight, eight extra services on that…

JOURNALIST: So I can hear a train coming.