Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories - Shadow Minister for Regional Communications- Transcript - Interview ABC Ballarat Radio - 24 October 2025

DR ANNE WEBSTER MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND TERRITORIES

SHADOW MINISTER FOR REGIONAL COMMUNICATIONS

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR MALLEE

TRANSCRIPT

TOPICS: Default road speed limit reduction federal consultation, road safety, consultation with regional Australians, Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program

MARTIN:

Let's talk about speed limits on country roads. First up, an SMS. City people don't know how to drive on slippery dirt roads. That may be true, and dirt roads, I guess, is part of the picture for this. How would you feel if the default speed limit was lowered by 30%? That's one of the options on the table as the federal government is looking for ways to reduce reduce Right now the default speed limit on sealed roads outside of built up areas is 100 kilometres an hour. There's no no default speed limit apparently for gravel roads. I noticed that on a government website this morning. And as I said earlier, at first I thought this was a bit of mischief making. I wasn't sure that this was true, but it is. The Shadow Minister for Regional Development is Dr Anne Webster, who is the member for Mallee. She's criticising the proposal. She's our guest this morning. Dr Anne Webster, good morning. Welcome to the programme

WEBSTER

Thank you very much, Steve. Great to be talking to you.

MARTIN

Can you explain first up, Anne Webster, the default limit as it applies currently? Because where there is a signposted speed limit, that's in place. When does the default speed limit come into play?

WEBSTER

The default speed limit comes into play when there are no sign limits. So out in the country, we've got thousands of kilometres where there is no speed limit sign at all. So your default speed is 100km.

MARTIN

Okay, so if you're left town, you've been driving along the road for 15, 20 minutes or so and there are no speed limit signs, in theory, you apply the default speed limit, currently 100km, if this change goes through, it'd be more like 70km?

WEBSTER

Yes, what a horrifying thought. Look, let's be really clear. Nobody wants to see more fatalities on any of our roads. That is very, very clear. But for the government to put out a consultation paper which only is addressing the possibility of dropping the speed limit by 30% is, in my view, extremely unreasonable. So instead of fixing the roads, they just really... I mean, if you're cynical, you'd say they've already decided that they're going to push the default speed down to 70 kilometres an hour. That will make a huge difference to truck haulage through regional areas. It will make a big difference to productivity more generally and certainly frustrate mums and dads who are trying to get their kids to school or to sport or whatever they're doing out in the regions.

MARTIN

Have you calculated, Anne Webster, how much longer it would take you to get if you drove from one end of your electorate to the other?

WEBSTER

No, I haven't done that, but somebody has said that it will increase their time and cost them additional $8,000 to get from the north to the south, just of time.

MARTIN

I'm assuming that $8,000 is over a series of trips, not just one trip.

WEBSTER 

Through the year, sorry.

MARTIN

Through the year, yeah. Okay. This is just a discussion paper, though. This is not at this point a firm proposal, or do you think the decision's already been made, as you alluded to?

WEBSTER

Look, what we see is these brief consultation periods, and this one is particularly brief. It's 28 days. It finishes in three days. The Minister did not announce it through a press conference, hence your query about whether it was actually a social scam. No, it's real, and closes in three days. So people out in the country don't even know the consultation paper is taking place.

So what's the prospect then of this getting across the line, Anne Webster? I understand what you're saying. I understand that it is real. I just wonder if the prospect of this actually happening is high.

WEBSTER

I think that it is high, okay, you know, if I look at the consultation papers that have been done or the consultation periods that have been open to the public, for example, with other areas such as transmission lines or mining through Mallee, the government just completely ignores those public views and are going ahead because this is what they want to do. It saves them, let's face it, spending the probably billion or more dollars in repairing the roads that need to be repaired.

MARTIN

Do you understand from the consultation paper what effect this would have on unsealed roads? Because when I was looking on the Australian government website today, it did make the point that there is no default speed limit for gravel roads.

WEBSTER

Yeah, that's right. So they're looking at gravel roads as well and reducing those to kilometres. I have to say, when I was driving through the Wimmera a couple of weeks ago, the bitumen road itself was so much worse than the dirt road. I could easily travel 100km on this particular dirt road because it was so well formed. It was flat. There were no potholes. There were no corrugated areas. So it was safer, in fact.

MARTIN

Where do people find the information if they want to make a submission into this, Anne Webster?

WEBSTER

You can go to infrastructure.gov.au and go to consultation papers and look up reducing - I'll give you the right name -regulatory impact analysis, reduce open road default speed limit, infrastructure.gov.au.

MARTIN

As you've been raising this over the last week or so, what have your constituents, what have people been saying back to you about it when they hear about it?

WEBSTER

People are just so frustrated in the regions. We have little sense of any power over our lives, and particularly when we're, you know, whatever we're doing, whether we're we're farm or whether we're working in the communities, decisions are being made and affecting us. It's not about doing things with us, it's about doing things to us and it's just outrageous when so little investment has been put into the regions.

I'd call out Catherine King on this. I've been going, I was just in Western Australia this week, talking with shires across Western Australia, of course, across Victoria, my own electorate. People desperately want the Local Roads Community Infrastructure Grants programme which was untied untied and uncontested. In other words, it was money for councils to fix roads because most of them are broke. They can't afford to do the regional roads and they're responsible for so many of them. So Labor have let down the regions in a serious way here.

MARTIN

Anne Webster, thanks for your time this morning.

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