Residents in Lower Plenty have run out of patience with the state of their roads, and they're making sure everyone knows who they hold responsible.

Potholes across the north-eastern suburb have been circled in white chalk, each one labelled with a single word: "Labor". The markings stretch along main roads and residential streets alike, an unmistakable message to the Carroll government from locals who say they've been left to dodge craters on their daily drive.

It's a fitting rebuke from Banyule, the very council area a Labor MP singled out earlier this year when she suggested some Victorians were happy living with potholes.

During a Legislative Council debate in July, Labor Upper House MP Sonja Terpstra said she had driven over a Banyule council road that was "probably one of the worst roads I had ever experienced", before claiming that "it is the residents who do not want it resealed, because they do not like traffic going down it, so they are quite happy to have it full of potholes, might I add."

Turning to Coalition MPs, she added: "So not everyone is on board with your pothole thing; they actually like it full of potholes."

The residents of Lower Plenty appear to disagree.

Their frustration is backed by the government's own watchdog. A Victorian Auditor-General's report tabled in September found 48 per cent of state roads were in poor or very poor condition in 2024, up from 39 per cent in 2021. The gap between road defects recorded and those actually repaired doubled between January 2025 and June 2026, and the Department of Transport and Planning's own estimate puts the cost of simply holding roads at their current condition at more than $3 billion a year.

For some Victorians the consequences have been deadly. In September, 71-year-old Ballarat motorcyclist Peter "Tiki" Mason died on the Western Highway at Trawalla after his bike reportedly struck a pothole and he lost control. Police said the exact circumstances were still being investigated.

A friend of his, Casey Bandy, didn't mince words. "The government has got blood on its hands," Bandy said.

Premier Ben Carroll called the crash a tragedy and insisted road maintenance was "back to basics" under his leadership. Roads Minister Paul Hamer responded to the Auditor-General's findings by saying, "I didn't need a report to tell me the condition of our roads in Victoria need to be improved."

But the Opposition says Labor has no one to blame but itself. Nationals leader Danny O'Brien accused Carroll of cutting $214 million from the road maintenance budget over two years while he was Roads Minister, and the Coalition has pledged $5 billion over four years to fix one million potholes.

Labor has since boosted its maintenance spending to around $1.4 billion. For the drivers of Lower Plenty, the chalk on the bitumen says that's too little, too late.