Safe Farming Tasmania and McIntyre independent MLC Greg Hall have called on the Tasmanian government to follow mainland leads and consider producer rebates for quad bike safety equipment.
Bracknell farmer and Safe Farming Tasmanian chairman Corey Spencer has been lobbying the government for quad safety equipment rebates for almost three years.
“We are trying to get this rebate program off the ground. It’s something we’ve been working towards,” Mr Spencer said.
Safe Farming Tasmania would like to see a flexible rebate program that gave producers up to half the cost of quad bike safety equipment back.
“I would like to see it cover 50 per cent of the cost of rollover protection.
If we can encourage people by covering 30, 40 or 50 per cent of that cost, it’s a pretty fair deal,” he said.
“As long as there’s some encouragement, more people will [purchase safety equipment] if there is a rebate of some description,” Mr Spencer said.
Safe Farming Tasmania is pushing for the program to be introduced as soon as possible, with retrospective payments for quad bike safety equipment bought since the rebate was suggested.
Mr Hall runs three quad bikes and a side by side on his own property.
He said that the latter was a safer vehicle, but there were times when quad bikes were better.
Building and Construction minister Guy Barnett said the government took quad bike safety “very seriously”.
“Since 2015 we have worked with farmers to make farm safety a permanent fixture on Tasmanian farms through our Safe Farming Tasmania program.
“This program was made permanent in this year’s budget,” Mr Barnett said.