Estimates - Local Government - Road Safety
CHAIR - Minister, Ms Dow has touched on this, but we know that investment in roads is a huge part of what councils do, yet road-user charges are levied exclusively by the state government. We've talked about the heavy vehicle motor tax. Over $30 million is collected per year by the state government, but it only provides $1.5 million to local government, even though councils manage 14,400 kilometres of Tasmania's road network. The funding to local councils remains unchanged for 27 years. It's not being increased by a single cent. What's the plan? Are you looking at reinvesting speeding fine revenue directly into local road safety by supporting road network safety plans and reinstating the Better Active Transport Grant Program?
Mr VINCENT - There's a couple of different things, there. Yes, the $1.5 million, as we said to Ms Dow's question was lifted last year to $5 million - or for this year to $5 million - and I honestly am working through continuing that process. Whether it's indexed or adjustments are made regularly is something we still have to work through. Certainly there is a lot of discussion going on with the road safety funds at the moment and with the fine money being hypothecated in some form towards road safety instead of into internal revenue. That is discussion that's happening right at this moment. I would like to see that we change the way we think about road safety as a whole in working with councils. A lot of work does happen with black spot and road safety programs already for a lot of pedestrian crossings and a lot of guide rails and other smaller jobs. But we are now seeing a lot more effort put into road safety advice when roads are being designed, whether it's on a council road or a state road, and we need to make sure that, whether that's in relation to pedestrians, cyclists, prams and everything else was active or whether it's motorcyclists - on the shape of corners and everything like that - that we do have a better understanding between main roads and council roads. I think there is a big part to play with the funds from fines being channelled into a lot more of that road safety work. I can assure you that is the discussion that I'm having right at the moment with the Treasurer.
CHAIR - Okay. I want to know what tangible opportunities you see for councils to implement part of the whole-of-government preventive health strategy. There's a huge role for local council to keep their communities healthy. You've talked about roads, how do you see that working in part of the overall preventive health strategy?
Mr VINCENT - That's probably not something that gets discussed a lot at in my level of ministry other than we see -
CHAIR - Well it should, it's whole-of-government.
Mr VINCENT - Yes. I will come back to Matt on that about how well-being is incorporated into it all, but we are having a lot of discussions with councillors about how when we're designing pathways, walkways and how it all interlinks between municipalities [inaudible] general well-being. Certainly, some of the other issues are more directly related to health, but there are also a lot of good understandings now on how the level of cooperation between some of our work that state is doing and how that may benefit local government also starting to flow. But I will ask Mr Healey for a bit more on the well-being side because we did have a lot of discussions over the last umpteen years about what health and well-being actually meant into councils.
Mr HEALEY - Thank you. Through you, minister. As you may be aware, the state has released its well-being framework, which outlines the range of domains that contribute to the well-being of our communities. That aligns very well with the recommendations of the future of local government review to incorporate well-being, the concept of well-being, into the role of local government to reflect exactly the sorts of issues that you're talking about There's many things that local government does that contributes to the well-being of our communities, whether it is the provision of public open space and the structure of our communities, all the way through to funding local community grants to improve engagement and well-being. We hope that through including well-being in the role and through the ongoing development of the charter that I was mentioning before, we can really more clearly define how local government contributes to well-being and how local government and things like the preventive health strategy need to talk together and then to be working in a very integrated way.
CHAIR - Thank you.