Ms O’CONNOR – I’d love to, thanks, Chair. Thanks, Bec. Minister, I think we’ve had this discussion a number of times, whether it’s in Question Time or across the table. As you are aware, national and state governments have prepared climate risk assessment reports. The Tasmanian climate risk assessment report commissioned by government tells us that we are in for extreme weather events with increased frequency and severity, and that includes obviously floods, storm surge, sea level rise, but also catastrophic bushfires.
Given that local government in many ways is closest to community and dealing with the consequences of these extreme events, which will occur with increased frequency and intensity, can you point to any resources in the Budget for local government that assist with adaptation measures, particularly?
Mr VINCENT – I don’t believe there’s anything there at the moment, but let me just check.
Ms O’CONNOR – I ask this because the Local Government Association of Tasmania had a grant for – I think it was a couple of years where they were able to employ a part-time FTE under a state grant, so a climate readiness grant. That was a coordinating grant between all councils.
Mr VINCENT – Yes.
Ms O’CONNOR – Would LGAT’s funding be administered by the Minister for the Environment?
Mr VINCENT – Which would be the Minister of Environment. I think we touched on that yesterday.
Mr HEALEY – There probably are a few areas across government that do work on climate change, on severe weather events, and work with local government to make sure that they’re prepared and are thinking about how to boost their community resilience. Resilience and Recovery Tasmania in the Department of Premier and Cabinet is –
Ms O’CONNOR – They don’t allocate funding to LGAT to work on climate.
Mr HEALEY – They do access funding pools. For example, they have been doing a lot of work with local governments around drought and drought resilience. They’ve also been doing a lot of work with local governments around flood mapping and bushfire risk mapping, education around flood and bushfire risk. I haven’t been in that space for a little while, but for many years we were quite ahead of the pack in terms of our mapping of bushfire risk, mapping of flooding risk, and the engagement with local government on those too.
Ms O’CONNOR – I know that very well, Mr Healey, as you know I know well, because I was the minister when a lot of that good work started.
Mr HEALEY – It was, and we are benefitting from that work now embedded within our planning environment. Bushfire attack levels – it wasn’t that long ago, but we didn’t have a structured approach to planning and reducing and building resilience in our built infrastructure from bushfires. We do now, and it’s quite a sophisticated system.
Ms O’CONNOR – Well, it’s developing. I’m not sure you would want to rely on it completely under the circumstances, because there’s still resourcing and capacity issues, for example, in the TFS and the SES and Parks and Forestry; but I guess the question is – and through you, minister: in this portfolio, are there any resources allocated specific to climate change adaptation? Mitigation is one thing, but adaptation at a local government level in places for example like Lauderdale, Sorell, Orford – even Hobart, which is on high risk for bushfire; what’s in local government to drive that adaptation work?
Mr VINCENT – There is work done by the other departments that can be contribute financially or work with the local government association separate without going through the local government ministry, in some cases. And straight on the LGAT’s role, on their website:
We have also engaged with the state government on the review of the Tasmanian Climate Change (State Action) Act (2008) and the development of Tasmania’s Climate Change Action Plan for 2023‑25.
So, they’re already working with some of the departments on that, but not through this parliament.
Ms O’CONNOR – Thank you, minister. I think LGAT would have been disappointed to hear your colleague minister Ogilvie’s response to questions about the climate act review the other night, where she seemed very casual about whether or not any strengthening of the act was needed. How are you making sure as minister that adaptation planning is embedded at a local government level, noting what Mr Healey said before about all these excellent tools we now have – sea level rise, inundation risk, landslip risk – all these tools that we have available to local government, but there doesn’t seem to be much coordination of climate adaptation activities or resourcing going into it.
Mr VINCENT – It is not something that I’ve had to deal too much with at this point in time, but I’m happy to add it to the next agenda with the CEO of LGAT to see where his comfort level sits with this and see if I can facilitate anything different or improved.
Ms O’CONNOR – That’s really good to hear, minister. You might just, before you have that meeting, refresh yourself on the Tasmanian Climate Risk Assessment, given how pertinent it is to all your portfolios – in fact, you particularly as a minister, all your portfolios.
Mr VINCENT – Thank you, I will take that on board. I think it might be in amongst my pile of reading, but yes, point taken. Thank you, and as you know, I have been trying to look into some of the climate situations, and certainly to talking with Mr Ramsay that was here before about making sure that the reviews are done at a proper time from the TPC, and my knowledge of that area is growing.
Ms O’CONNOR – Good. Can I ask you – so, if Clarence Council, for example, had a project or some work that it wanted to do along the South Arm Highway at Lauderdale, which, when there’s a big weather event, the waves crash over the road and it’s dangerous, where would Clarence Council go for infrastructure funding support, advice and that sort of thing, or some funding for a project?
Mr HEALEY – Resilience and Recovery Tasmania are actively engaging with councils to talk about facilitating access to national funds like the disaster resilience fund.
I think, and I won’t say it definitively, but certainly last time I spoke with that team, Tasmania was punching way above its weight in terms of getting access to the disaster resilience fund from the Commonwealth, and we were facilitating projects in local government that enabled them to address some of those risks. So, we do really actively – and they are very connected with local government on these sorts of issues.
Ms O’CONNOR – I can’t find the page quickly, but my recollection is that the funding for the recovery and resilience fund sort of drops off quite sharply in the out‑years.
Mr HEALEY – I think there’s been a – there was some funding that they had access to, and so for 2024‑25 to 2025‑26, it returns back to a base – to be honest, I can’t comment about their ongoing budget.
CHAIR – We’ve got some information coming on notice about that, I think, Cassy – from memory, I think you asked for that.
Ms O’CONNOR – Oh good. So, the inputs to the recovery and resilience fund – what are they, Commonwealth and state monies?
Mr HEALEY – The Commonwealth runs a fairly sizeable disaster resilience fund – or Disaster Ready Fund, they call it – and they work with states and territories to help to facilitate applications into that fund. RRT works with councils, they put out notices to say that the rounds of that fund are open, and then they work with councils to put submissions together. Sometimes, the state has in the past been able to provide matching funding to some of those, to make it more likely that they –
Ms O’CONNOR – Last question, just so I can clarity on the funding here. It’s not a funding pool that is always reactive, is it? So, if Clarence Council, for example, or Hobart City Council, wanted to do some more work up in the Wellington Park on fire-risk mitigation, is that source of funding available for them to bid into? Is it that kind of funding pool, that a local government can access for preventative works, adaptation works?
Mr HEALEY – Yes, it’s for Disaster Ready – yes, it’s actually for building resilience and reducing risks associated with disasters. Now, I want to be a bit cautious because it’s not my area, so I don’t want to mislead you in terms of the exact eligibility criteria, but it’s absolutely – we work as the agent – ‘agent’ is the wrong word – we help to facilitate local government applications to that fund, and then if need be –
Ms O’CONNOR – To the Commonwealth?
Mr HEALEY – To the Commonwealth, yes. We can group up applications or we can sometimes – in the past, we’ve been able to support the applications with some matched funding. But no, we’ve been quite successful in that program in attracting funding into the state for improving disaster resilience.
Ms O’CONNOR – Okay. Is it worth, minister – I guess the question is – you’ve had a long day… You’re going really well, not long now –
CHAIR – Don’t drag it out.
Ms O’CONNOR – I just wanted to – is the funding that’s available even close to sufficient to the task?
CHAIR – In your view, maybe.
Ms O’CONNOR – Yes. Given we’ve got all these local government areas, we’ve got soft coast, we’ve got sub‑councils that have more inundation risk – there’s a whole lot of different risk elements here, each council will have their own. I’m just trying to establish where is the pool of funding to help?
Mr VINCENT – I can answer that by saying: in my time here, I haven’t heard any overwhelming evidence to say that it is not. We do appreciate the pressures of course, and when projects are coming up specifically, they’ve always been looked at the past, but it’s not something that has been a flood towards my office at all in any way.
Ms O’CONNOR – Last one before I go to Bec, in the National Climate Risk Assessment, it’s pretty clear the advice is we probably need to be spending in the order of $1-2 billion every five to six years as a state, $1-2 billion every five to six years, in order to have real adaptation capacity in the system.
It doesn’t seem, obviously, like the states kind of do that and it wants to fritter away nearly $2 billion on the stadium, but just to convey to you the scale of the task, minister, according to Australian and Tasmanian governments’ own commissioned experts.
Mr VINCENT – Some of those items, and I’m not trying to push back on the importance of it here, but some of those items as we heard from the road crews here are taken into account now when they’re doing some of the work; it’s not perfect, I know a lot of the coastal councils have won quite a bit of funding from federal funds.
We improved at Sorell in the last three years in the high 20s of stormwater outlets that were assessed and filtration and proper piping in systems put in place to stop erosion, but also to filter where it was coming from, and we also looked further up. I know quite a few councils had that money available to them and won some of those grants.
Although it mightn’t be just a bucket of money there at the moment, there are a lot of things that do happen in the normal course where these things are taken into account. It’s not like it’s being pushed to the side. It is a growing area of concern where there are a lot of good people, especially in local government, that deal with this and do filter that through and there are quite a few grants that have popped up that I’m aware of in my time.
Ms O’CONNOR – The issue is coordination, which is why LGAT wanted that bit of extra resourcing and to put on a person who could help coordinate local government’s response to climate. Thanks for your answers.
Mr VINCENT – From memory STCA a few years ago, when your colleague Helen was in the chair, there, had some resources towards that as well that we work closely on.
