State budget for regional Victoria: Five key areas to focus on

Premier Jacinta Allan has sent her ministers out in recent weeks to make it clear it will be a "tough" budget, full of "hard decisions" in "challenging" circumstances.

But what is this likely to mean for regional Victorians? Here are five critical areas to look at closely when Treasurer Tim Pallas hands down his tenth budget.

The big Melbourne infrastructure projects are being slow-tracked and postponed, which means any regional centres hoping for cash for a pet project are also likely to be disappointed. But housing is one area that might see more investment.

The national housing crisis has hit regional Victorians hard, with stubbornly low rental vacancies and high prices across the state keeping pressure on public housing waiting lists.

The state government committed a minimum of $765 million from the $5.3 billion Big Housing Build to regional Victoria, with a pledge this figure would grow to $1.25 billion.

But in south-west Victoria, which has already received more funding than originally promised, the investment is creating fewer new houses than hoped and is falling well short of the need in the region.

A similar pattern elsewhere in the state has shown the government's ambition to build 80,000 new homes each year is even more ambitious than originally thought.

The postponed major infrastructure projects will free up money and builders, but will the government divert these resources to fix the housing problem, and how much will come to the regions?

Victoria's health system is in a critical condition, with the state's hospitals on track for a $3 billion deficit in 2023-24.

The massive shortfall means Treasurer Tim Pallas will have to find billions of dollars just to keep hospital doors open, then decide whether to spend billions more in 2024-25 to avoid a repeat next year.

The government spent $1.5 billion over the past two years to tackle the state's ballooning elective surgery wait times, but the money hasn't gone as far as the Health Department hoped.

Nine months into 2023-24 the hospital system was tracking 27,000 elective surgeries short of its target for the year, with nearly half of the semi-urgent patients on the wait list failing to get surgery in the recommended time frame.

But the huge investment has started to bring the overall wait list back down, the question is whether the government will renew the funding, which essentially lapses on June 30.

Victoria's regional road network has been devastated by flooding over the past two years.

The state government's response - in last year's budget - was to scrap setting repair targets for the year.

In 2022-23 the Department of Transport fell more than 25 per cent short of its target, leaving more than 3 million square metres of road surface unrepaired.

In May 2023 the government announced $6.6 billion for road maintenance across the state over the coming decade.

A spokesperson declined to say how much of that figure would be spent outside Melbourne, but said more than 50 per cent of the $770 million scheduled for 2023-24 would be dedicated to regional areas.

The government has called its statewide repair funding "unprecedented", but the decade-long investment is just a quarter of the money being spent on 15 kilometres of freeway in Melbourne's east.

Victoria recorded its worst road toll in 15 years in 2023, with experts saying road conditions play a crucial role.

The government is refusing to release crash data that would reveal the truth about such deadly incidents, but will it put more funding towards repairing the state's most dangerous roads?

The lack of childcare is a nightmare for parents across Victoria, but in regional areas there are fewer centres, fewer options and often no alternatives if a centre closes.

Dozens of families in south-west Victoria have been left with no option but to scale back work commitments when the only childcare centre within 50km announced it would close in June.

The state government invested $270 million to create free kinder for all Victorian children in 2023, but an exodus of workers from the sector and strict rules for the required kinder hours have led many providers to close down.

There is a further $9 billion committed over the next decade to transform four-year-old kinder into pre-prep, with the government estimating 5000 extra educators will be required under the plan, but the true figure is likely to be much higher.

Low pay rates for childcare workers have left many centres - many of which are run on tight margins - struggling to find staff. Advocates say government money is needed to prevent more centres closing.

ACM revealed in April the disproportionately high rates of family and gendered violence in regional Victoria.

Four of the six women killed in Victoria since the start of 2024 have died in regional areas, despite the fact country Victoria holds just 23 per cent of the population.

Police data from 2023 showed a similar pattern, with the top 26 LGAs for family violence serious assaults being in regional Victoria.

Victoria spends more than all the other Australian states combined to combat family Violence, but the statistics show there isn't enough money being spent outside Melbourne.

Premier Jacinta Allan represents Bendigo East, which is one of the most dangerous places for women in the state. Her office said there were no current plans to target regional areas in response to the epidemic of violence across the state.

Family violence service providers said managing cases in regional areas was more sensitive, difficult and expensive than it was in Melbourne, but they were funded to the same unit cost.

As a result, regional services were constantly overrun with demand. Tuesday's budget will reveal whether the government intends to step in and address the crisis in the areas that need help the most.