Estimates - Infrastructure - Tasman Bridge

CHAIR - Minister, I want to ask you about the internal departmental briefings revealing your own engineers having identified uncertainties, but this time about the Tasman Bridge's structural condition, particularly its foundations and potential limits on its capacity. Experts are warning that the unknowns are too significant to rely on business-as-usual inspections and are calling for urgent targeted investigation and monitoring. Minister, can you explain how you can assure Tasmanians the Tasman Bridge is safe and fit for decades to come when your own advice highlights structural uncertainties? What urgent steps are you taking to properly assess the bridge's condition and secure its long-term future?

Mr VINCENT - Yes, thank you for that question. A lot of the advice we're seeing now is over a time period. There've been a lot of changes over the last couple of years. It's been something that's been passionate to me, mainly because Sorell is part of the issue of the amount of people moving over the bridge, so I've certainly been part of that discussion. It was when I first moved into the ministry. There are modern techniques now with monitoring a lot of the things that happen with a bridge, or any structure like that, that are coming into play and help with that. There's been some work done in the past. We'll ask Mr Moloney, who's right up to speed with the technical side of this on the Tasman Bridge, but it is something that is discussed on a regular basis. I know there's been a lot of comment in the press, and we should reassure people that the bridge is safe, work has been done, and the modern techniques and monitoring are in place and continue to be in place. The federal government and the state government are both funding extra measures to continue to monitor such an important asset for Hobart and Tasmania. I will ask Mr Moloney to explain the technical side of how the bridge is monitored on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis, please.

Mr MOLONEY - In terms of the ongoing monitoring, the deputy secretary of Transport may wish to add to that, but I can comment broadly on the investigations that are undertaken in relation to the barrier improvement projects and the pathway improvement projects. They basically related to investigating whether there was surplus capacities in the foundations that would enable us to add quite sizeable extra structures to the bridge. So, what was originally proposed for that project was to widen the pathways on both sides of the bridge to three-metre-wide pathways. Through thorough investigation, we concluded that there wasn't sufficient information that we had at hand today that could demonstrate there was excessive conservatism in the design back in the 1970s, so we had to ensure that the additions we were making to the bridge minimised extra load being applied. That's basically what we've undertaken. Those investigations did not identify any new issues or any matters that indicate that the bridge is unsafe or is of structural concern. They simply identified that there wasn't extra capacity for us to stick really big structures on each side of the bridge.

Mr VINCENT - Do you want to talk about the monitoring under water, above water, and the piers, please?

Ms HEYDON - Yes, through you, minister, and for absolute clarity, as the area responsible for the management of this asset, the asset is safe and it meets the capacity required of it. The reference you make is to a theoretical assessment of additional capacity in relation to a project, not of the structure of the bridge. We undertake daily deck inspections, weekly path inspections, weekly gantry signage inspections, monthly deck drainage inspections, and bimonthly inspections. We've also advanced in further assessment of what technologies are available, particularly through a funding arrangement for the feds, so we've got a really good handle of the capacity and structure of the bridge