00:00Tonight's another night in our fight against potholes. We have been talking to the crews
00:05here on the New England Highway and the Hunter they're working through till about one o'clock
00:09tomorrow morning. Sixteen metres of new road by the time they're finished. It'll be completely
00:14ripped up and resealed. It's great work and fantastic to see their passion for the job
00:20of making all our roads better to drive on. Since we've come to government in 2023
00:26we have filled over 625,000 potholes on our state road network. In the Hunter since the
00:331st of July we've done nearly 1,700 potholes being filled. Now the patching we're doing tonight
00:40is quite heavy patching. I really want to thank the crews that are working on this. The crew here
00:45are going to be on the road until just after one o'clock tomorrow morning. They've waited for the
00:50traffic queues to go down and then they're getting in there doing that really deep heavy patching.
00:55There will be about 60 metres of new road for motorists to drive on tomorrow.
00:59We want to really improve our road maintenance. That's been a key priority for our government
01:04as we know that it wasn't up to standard when we came into government. That's been this sort of
01:10maintenance but it's also been around that disaster recovery funding and of course we're doing
01:17that investment with our local councils. This year in the budget there's around 17 million dollars for
01:23local councils in the Hunter to repair their roads. This is an ongoing job doing maintenance on our
01:29road network. These warriors behind me who have been working tonight get out. A lot of them have
01:35been working very long shifts over the last few weeks particularly but trying to get onto the network.
01:41At the time we've got to be right, the weather's got to be right and we want them to do
01:44it safely.
01:45One of the things I have noticed today which I do want to call out is quite a few motorists
01:49haven't been
01:50complying with the speed zones outside the work site. So you know these are the people, the guys and
01:55girls who are actually fixing our roads. We want to make sure that they're safe and they get home
02:00tonight. So really do adjust your speeds around the work zones. It is pretty scary being in live
02:06traffic environment and we need them to be safe. The other thing we want to do of course is get
02:11on top
02:11of the potholes. We know that the earlier we can work on them the better it is. It's quicker, they're
02:17not as well advanced. So if you see a pothole, go on the
02:20Service NSW website, jump online and report it. You can also call transport on 131700. Even if it's not a
02:28state road, if it is one that is managed by councils, we will get it through to the right people
02:33so the
02:33crews can come in, make the assessment and most importantly fix the roads. So great, great work
02:38guys. Some of these people here have been working on M1 to Raymond Terrace, they've just come off that
02:43work. So great to see continuing great roads for the Hunter, new and old.
02:50We'll see you in the next couple of weeks.
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