Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

I too congratulate and recognise the member for Barker in moving this very important motion. He understands the regions.

As a former chair of the Tasmanian Black Spot Consultative Panel and, like the member for Barker, a representative of a large rural electorate, ensuring that our entire road network is maintained and fit for purpose is important to me. There were 1,187 fatalities on our nation's roads in the 12 months to the end of February—45 more than in the same period last year. In Tasmania this represented a 36.8 per cent increase in lost lives. It's a sad and confronting statistic that Tasmania has the highest road deaths per capita of any state in Australia. Another important statistic is that in Tasmania local government-owned roads comprise approximately 80 per cent of the entire road network—approximately 14,500 kilometres. Around 78 per cent of these roads, or 10,700 kilometres or thereabouts, are rural roads in rural areas. In terms of safety, these 10,700 kilometres of roads account for a disproportionate number, approximately one-third, of Tasmania's fatal and serious road accidents.

If you had the great fortune of visiting Tasmania in recent times and driven along our national highway from Hobart through to Smithton, you would have seen significant investment in two major arterial routes, the Midland and the Bass highways. Jointly funded by the federal and state governments, this investment is welcome, important and timely.

But our local roads, maintained by our local government and our local councils, are the ones I'm concerned about. They also require significant investment. This has been exacerbated in recent times by extraordinary weather events which have caused millions of dollars worth of damage to culverts and bridges and caused landslides and the like.

There is no doubt that our great local councils are committed to maintaining the roads that fall within their jurisdiction, but they're struggling to find the resources and the assets that they need. We're not comparing apples with apples when it comes to road funding as local government roads tend to have a much more diverse range of road environments to manage: from high-speed rural and remote roads with diverse services to local streets, residential shopping precincts and our local schools. Local governments also tend to have a greater mix of road users, like pedestrians and vulnerable cyclists, not to mention agricultural machinery and oversized, multi-articulated, heavy vehicles which are normally laden with produce going from farm to processing.

Although councils manage around 77 per cent of the national road network, they only collect 3.5 per cent of the total tax revenue raised by governments in Australia. In the 2023 pre-budget submission, the Australian Local Government Association called on the Albanese government to 'budget a fair increase to the Financial Assistance Grants' that local councils and local governments receive. This was in keeping with the election commitment made by the Labor government to local communities right across the nation. Regrettably, rather than increasing the Financial Assistance Grants to represent 'fair funding' in the May budget, they made cuts to this as a percentage of tax revenue. The Local Government Association of Queensland labelled it a 'clear failure' by the federal government—the Albanese government—to deliver fair funding to its rural and regional communities.

I welcome last week's announcement of the $2.57 million which has been allocated to Tasmania through the 2023-24 Black Spot Program. I welcome the benefits that 15 sites across Tasmania will receive through this investment. I particularly welcome the $550,000 investment in the electorate of Braddon and upgrades to local roads in Devonport and Kindred.

But right across our region, the state, the national and our local roads are in poor condition. They're dangerous and represent a serious risk for road safety, and it's putting a handbrake on productivity. There is inadequate funding of local places, local government areas and an unfair inequitable financial burden to local communities. I'm therefore calling on the federal government to prioritise the adequate resourcing of local councils through available avenues, including the Black Spot Program, the Financial Assistance Grants and the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program to ensure that our local road networks are maintained to a safe standard.

See this speech in context