MC: Rosemary Nixon AM
Reflection: Tony Battaini, See transcription elsewhere in this Bulletin
President’s announcements: After welcoming all to Rotary Melbourne’s 7th Meeting of the new Rotary Year and our 5137th Club meeting in our one hundred and sixth year, President Carol made special mention of Guest Speaker, Tony Aloisio as well as Mr. Ryusuke Yokoyama, President of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and formerly of the Rotary Club of Osaka. The full list of visiting Rotarians, visitors and guests of members is included later in this Bulletin.
President Carol then announced the Rotary Club of Melbourne Inc. Annual General Meeting will be held at our luncheon meeting on Wednesday 18 November 2026.
She highlighted the formation of the 2026-27 President’s Nominating Committee made up of 9 Club members, including herself as President, comprising:
Nomination forms are available from the Rotary Office, and any questions should be directed to the Honorary Secretary Sue Smith.
President Carol then invited Chair for the day and Rotary Melbourne member, Luke Bellfield, to take over the meeting and introduce our guest speaker, Tony Aloisio, CEO, Australian Flexible Pavements Association.
Tony’s presentation focused on the deteriorating condition of Victoria’s road network, arguing that the highly visible pothole problem is a symptom of a deeper failure to maintain one of Australia’s most valuable public assets. Roads, he emphasised, are fundamental to connecting communities and commerce, carrying the overwhelming majority of goods and services and underpinning national prosperity. The road network represents an enormous accumulated public investment and should therefore be regarded as part of the intergenerational wealth that today’s community has an obligation to maintain for those who follow.
Tony explained that most rural and regional Australian roads are relatively simple flexible pavements: a prepared subgrade and locally sourced crushed-rock base covered with bitumen and stone. The bitumen’s critical function is to seal the pavement against water. Over time, however, heat, cold and traffic cause bitumen to age, become brittle and crack. Once water penetrates the seal, vehicle movements effectively pump water through the pavement, weakening and dispersing the underlying material and eventually producing potholes and structural failure.
This led to the central argument of the presentation: preventive maintenance is dramatically cheaper than repairing roads after they fail. Victoria has increasingly adopted what Tony described as a reactive “worst-first” approach—allowing roads to deteriorate and then spending heavily repairing potholes. A billion-dollar pothole program, he argued, should be regarded as evidence of failure rather than successful road management. The economically rational strategy is to “keep the good roads good” through systematic resealing while keeping deteriorated roads safe until they can be rehabilitated. Once water penetration causes structural failure, reconstruction costs are many times greater than timely resealing and also generate substantially greater carbon emissions.
The problem is becoming more difficult because traffic volumes and vehicle weights are increasing, while more frequent or intense weather events expose already weakened pavements to additional water damage. Tony questioned whether roads should simply be reconstructed to historic standards or rebuilt more resiliently. Potential approaches include strengthening existing road bases with bitumen or cement and treating roads as a “linear quarry”—recovering and reusing existing materials rather than discarding them. Asphalt, he noted, is particularly recyclable.
A major theme was the inadequacy of current maintenance funding and performance measures. Rather than governments announcing dollars spent repairing potholes, Tony advocated measurable network-management KPIs, particularly the proportion of the road network routinely resealed and rehabilitated. Victoria’s recent performance, he argued, is far below what is required to preserve the network.
He also questioned the road-funding model. Drawing an analogy with his water bill, Tony noted that consumers can see explicitly what they pay to maintain water and sewerage infrastructure, whereas fuel excise disappears into consolidated government revenue. Roads are effectively another public utility, he argued, but lack an equally transparent and dedicated funding mechanism.
Q&A
Questions reinforced the practical consequences of deteriorating roads, including damaged tyres and vehicles. Tony suggested this illustrates a broader accountability problem: roads are “owned by everyone” and therefore effectively “owned by no one”, unlike utility infrastructure where responsibility for maintaining the asset is clearly identifiable.
Asked why Australia does not make greater use of concrete roads; he acknowledged their use overseas and in New South Wales but pointed to their substantially higher construction cost and the difficulty of replacing concrete pavement on heavily trafficked roads. Asphalt can often be renewed overnight, whereas concrete reconstruction can require much longer closures. He also cited Peninsula Link as an example where rigid application of differing metropolitan and regional design standards produced an inappropriate pavement solution despite essentially identical traffic conditions.
Finally, asked what Australia could learn from countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, Tony described extensive international knowledge-sharing through European and global pavement organisations. However, Australia faces the distinctive challenge of maintaining an immense road network across a sparsely populated continent. His conclusion was nevertheless clear: Victoria needs to move from politically attractive pothole repair towards long-term asset management, preventive maintenance, resilient construction and a transparent, sustainable funding model.
Chairman Luke then closed the meeting, thanking all for attending, especially Tony Battaini for the reflection, MC Rosemary Nixon, and the lunch & Reception teams.
He reminded all that next week’s meeting at No35 will feature Guest Speaker, District Governor 2026-27 – Graeme Hope.
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