A Victorian business owner has taken matters into his own hands—quite literally—by purchasing 100 kilograms of asphalt to fill in a large pothole on a busy Mornington Peninsula road.

For weeks, Peter Gleeson says locals travelling on Baxter-Tooradin Road in Frankston were forced to dodge a pothole several centimetres deep.

While potholes are ordinarily a simple council issue, in Australia’s second most populous state, they have taken a life of their own and become another election issue the Labor government must contend with.

Weeks earlier, a motorcyclist died after losing control when he rode into a pothole west of Ballarat.

“My family travel up and down that road [in Frankston] and I just thought, ‘That’s enough,’ and I went and got my crew,” Gleeson told The Epoch Times.

Gleeson runs a demolition company, Inside & Out, and said calls from locals to fix the road had seemingly not been followed up.

The fix took around 20 minutes, with Gleeson’s son and daughter helping to manage traffic.

“You could stand in the hole and it would be up to your shins,” he said. “I just had to make it safe for my grandkids and everyone else.

“People have had enough, they’ve had a gutful.”

Gleeson said he felt the state had been diverting funds into infrastructure projects that were not needed, and not prioritising everyday safety fixes like potholes.

A video of the Gleesons fixing the hole has clocked around half a million views online, according to the family. The fix cost around $500 (US$349).

The family says the pothole had already damaged a number of vehicles and tyres before they took matters into their own hands.

A spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Transport and Planning told The Epoch Times the state was currently in the middle of a “road blitz,” doubling the number of potholes being filled and the length of roads being repaired.

“It’s thanks to our record $1.4 billion investment in road maintenance in the 2026-27 financial year,” the spokesperson said.

The Epoch Times understands it is considered an offence under state guidelines to work on public roads without consent.

According to the Department, anyone seeking to carry out work on state roads or roadsides must follow an approval process and pay a fee when submitting an application for consent.

Approval can take up to 20 business days, with fees for working on a road costing from $76 to $746 depending on the type of road and works.