Kingborough is one of Tasmania’s fastest growing municipalities. Roads, community facilities, and open spaces must keep pace with population growth. Council must plan ahead, not react after the fact.
Infrastructure investment will naturally be weighted toward urban areas where the majority of the population lives. That is responsible financial planning. But population size does not excuse neglect. Every part of Kingborough, from Kingston to Snug, Margate, Woodbridge, and Bruny Island, deserves infrastructure maintained to a safe and functional standard appropriate to its community’s needs. Elderly residents, mobility impaired residents, and vulnerable communities in regional areas should not be left with unsafe footpaths, deteriorating roads, or unmet basic infrastructure needs simply because they live outside the urban core. The principle is not equal spending. It is that no community should be left behind.
As Mayor I will:
- Develop a 10 year infrastructure plan aligned to population growth projections
- Prioritise road safety and traffic management in high growth areas
- Advocate strongly to state and federal government for Kingborough’s fair share of infrastructure funding
- Deliver community facilities that reflect current and future community need
- Introduce mandatory independent delivery oversight for all capital works projects above a defined threshold, with public reporting milestones
- Ensure council project management failures such as the Kingston bus interchange and Summerleas Road underpass are never repeated. Systemic issues identified in independent reviews must be acted upon
- Assess road access and egress in the areas of highest bushfire exposure as part of the 10 year plan, because a single road in and out is an infrastructure problem long before it becomes an emergency services problem
The register residents built
Residents supplied their own infrastructure list, unprompted, when I published this priority. It is the starting input to the 10 year plan consultation rather than a substitute for it, and every item will be assessed on merit, cost and safety. Publishing it here is the proof that community feedback leads somewhere.
- Seal Summerleas Road, and a footpath through to the fire station
- Seal Tyndall Road through to the dog beach
- Finish Bundalla Road
- Impara Drive at Oyster Cove, listed for bitumen in the 1980s and still a dirt track
- Potholes on Allens Rivulet Road
- A pedestrian crossing at Margate, and a safe crossing for Margate Primary
- The Sandfly Road turn onto the Channel Highway at peak hour
- Bus shelters on Redwood Road and through the Channel
- The Spring Farm to Kingston View Drive connector
- Overtaking lanes on the bypass
- Drainage on the Alonnah footpath
The numbers behind the plan
Kingborough is one of the fastest growing councils in Tasmania. That is a vote of confidence in this place. It is also an invoice. 41,574 people live here today, and the projection says 47,300 by 2038. Last year we grew more than four times faster than the state, and over the last 15 years we have averaged close to double the state’s growth rate, year after year. Every one of those new residents needs a road, a footpath and a pipe in the ground. That is why I am backing a $5 million per annum increase for Council’s engineering team, and a published 10 year infrastructure plan genuinely mapped to the money, so every resident can look up their own street and see when the work is coming.
The second number in that briefing is the one that stopped me. It is not the growth, it is the age. 954 people in Kingborough are aged 85 or over today. By 2038 that number is 2,476, more than double inside 14 years. Our median age climbs from 42.5 to 46.6, residents aged 65 and over grow from 8,966 to 12,619, and Kingborough moves into what the briefing calls natural decline: more residents passing away each year than are born here. An older Kingborough needs the right housing, footpaths you can use with a walking frame, and a council that understands the ratepayer of 2038 is more likely to be on a fixed income. As Mayor I will bring forward an ageing and accessibility plan built on these projections, and report on it publicly every year so you can hold me to it.