Wodonga mayor Ron Mildren hopes cancelled Commonwealth Games funds will go to roads

Cr Mildren agreed with Premier Daniel Andrews' decision on Tuesday, July 18, to abandon the 12-day multi-sport event, slated for a host of regional Victorian centres including Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Gippsland, and redirect the funds to other regional projects, but called for it to be spent wisely.

The Victorian government set aside $2.6b for the event, but Mr Andrews announced his government would no longer support the Games because it was clear the cost would exceed $6 billion.

As it stands, there will be $1 billion spent on more than 1300 new social and affordable housing homes across regional Victoria, $150 million on tourism and events, while all of the permanent and upgraded sporting facilities planned will go ahead.

Cr Mildren said regional roads were at "crisis point" and needed to be the priority.

At a federal committee hearing into the roads network this week, a dearth of state funding and little action to maintain roads in the North East has left councils being blamed for "extremely dangerous" conditions for motorists.

"I think a significant amount of the money that was earmarked for the Commonwealth Games should be put back into regional roads," he said.

"There's a lot of other things that the government could do to open up housing much more quickly and take some of the state-imposed costs of construction of housing out of the equation to let the sector get on with it.

"I think you'd find there would be a lot more houses built if it wasn't so much of an imposition to pay all the government-imposed costs.

"I've had conversations in the last five or six weeks with business people in the region more broadly, and particularly the regional areas that weren't getting a huge presence of the Games, but we're having to shell out a lot of money where they weren't able to expect big crowds to be following it.

"Those sort of business people have been saying the costs are outweighing the benefits and I think that message has probably got back to the Premier.

"I think in that context, the Premier has made the right call, but now use the money that the government had allocated wisely and try and sort out the regional roads issue."

Benambra MP Bill Tilley said it was a missed opportunity to give back to regional sport.

"This is what happens when a government is broke ... we end up with potholed roads, losing health workers and now the embarrassment of abandoning the Commonwealth Games," he said.

"The Games were a chance to invest in regional grassroots sport, update some pretty tired sporting infrastructure and there's (Rutherglen's) Barkly Park, as well as Chiltern and Yack's (Yackandandah's) home grounds that are classic examples of being overlooked, neglected or under funded.

"My heart goes out to the athletes too ... they train for years for these events, for some it's a lifetime goal - a home nation Games."

Ovens Valley MP Tim McCurdy said the decision to scrap the Commonwealth Games was "another slap in the face to regional Victorians" and claimed it was a result of "financial mismanagement and incompetence" from the Andrews government that had spanned a decade.

"A brutal budget has led to a budget bungle of colossal degrees," he said.

In June, Wodonga Council supported Wodonga Bowling Club's campaign for funding to weatherproof its facilities to give it the ability to host events year-round, but Cr Mildren said access to potential funding through the Commonwealth Games would now be off the table.

"Even though the Premier has suggested that all agreed infrastructure would be funded, that project wasn't in that bucket," he said.

"It won't be able to progress any further from that source anyway, but it doesn't mean we won't continue to pursue it."

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