Welcome note

A word from our Group CEO

As we progress closer to mid-year and head towards a federal election, I’d like to highlight the work we have been doing to ensure we represent the views of every Tasmanian when it comes to road safety and transport, and the many ways in which we can improve.

Our position is clear – we want to make our roads the safest in the country and adopt measures that will help us achieve just that. The National Road Safety Strategy 2011–20 aimed to reduce the number of deaths on our roads by 30%, but in the past 10 years fatalities and serious injury in Tasmania have remained stubbornly high. We have the worst road safety record of any Australian state – 6.6 deaths per 100,000 population compared with the best-performing state, Victoria, with 3.17. Our calls to the Federal Government include the need for more action on its national road safety plan, a greater take-up of vehicle technology that delivers reduced emissions such as electric vehicles, lowemission and ultra-low-fuel-consumption vehicles and a national standard for roaduser tax to replace fuel excise, as well as a Federal-State-funded 10-year plan for upgrades to the Tasman Highway – one of our main tourist routes. As well as lobbying federally, we have been advocating for change within our state government – firstly through our submission to the Legislative Inquiry into Road Safety and our state budget submission. We made 38 recommendations to the Inquiry based on research we undertook with our membership. Our state budget submission calls for the government to create a sustainable, long-term vision for the future and ensure Tasmania has the right infrastructure to accommodate the rapid innovation in transport options including electric vehicles, e-scooters and autonomous vehicles, and to actively encourage these new forms of transport in order to reduce congestion. We are also calling for our road network to be safety-rated, to ensure speed limits are set to the physical limitations of the road and ensure road safety is an essential element in workplace health and safety across the public and private sectors. And we need to bring our technology for detecting mobile phone and seatbelt use in line with other states in order to save lives. We believe that every Tasmanian has the right to be safe on our roads and we are committed to our work to achieve that.

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