{"id":915905,"date":"2026-10-04T14:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T14:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/915905\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T14:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T14:40:15","slug":"thousands-of-motorcyclists-join-pothole-rally-outside-victorian-parliament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/915905\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of motorcyclists join pothole rally outside Victorian parliament"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of motorcyclists descended on Victoria’s parliament on Sunday to voice their concerns about safety issues stemming from the state of the road network, with a focus on potholes.<\/p>\n

Chants of “fix the roads” could be heard alongside the roar of motorbikes outside state parliament as more than 3,000 attendees joined the rally, which began at 11am.<\/p>\n

The so-called broken roads rally was organised by Michael White and Paul Povh, who host a motorcycling YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

“We’re not here because we’re bloody happy,” Mr White said as he addressed the crowd.<\/p>\n

“We’re not here because we care about Labor, Liberal, Greens, One Nation, anyone.<\/p>\n

“We’re here because of the bloody state of the roads and we’re sick of burying our mates.”<\/p>\n

The rally was organised in the wake of the death of 71-year-old Peter “Tiki” Mason, who died while riding his motorbike on the Western Highway<\/a> near Trawalla last month, after he was believed to have struck a pothole.<\/p>\n

Police have said they were still investigating the cause of the incident, while Mr Mason’s family have shared their heartbreak<\/a> and said they did not want his death to be used to promote “political agendas”.<\/p>\n

\"Crowd<\/p>\n

Police say the rally attracted more than 3,000 attendees. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

In recent days, heavy rain in some parts of the state has resulted in fresh potholes<\/a> on the road network.<\/p>\n

Concerns about potholes and poor road maintenance have become a key topic in the lead-up to the November state election.<\/p>\n

A recent report from the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office<\/a> on the maintenance of the state’s roads found that the proportion of state-managed roads in poor or very poor condition had increased from 39 to 48 per cent between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson attended the rally, while Premier Ben Carroll spoke with the rally’s organisers on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the state election, Labor has promised $1 billion for road maintenance, and has also doubled the amount allocated to fixing potholes this year with an additional $352 million. The Coalition has promised to spend $5 billion over four years to improve the state’s roads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of motorcyclists descended on Victoria’s parliament on Sunday to voice their concerns about safety issues stemming from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":915906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,233077,11211,44,207649,2647,26293,311532,36568,109895],"class_list":["post-915905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motorbikes","tag-motorcycles","tag-news","tag-potholes","tag-protest","tag-rally","tag-road-network","tag-roads","tag-state-parliament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/915906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}