This is not a submission on behalf of Shire of Strathbogie:
But a personal perspective only:
As a councillor in the Shire of Strathbogie I have an interest with a grass roots perspective of roadside vegetation. My Shire is actively developing a policy and strategy plan for roadside vegetation. This week we received officer advice that the process is proceeding slowly or held up by legislative / regulation change. These changes are expected to be finalised in next years corporate plan period. Copy of part of my original submission dated 26/09/2002 is included as an attachment.

THE ITEM AND CONCERNS ARE NUMEROUS:
Personally: I am concerned at the cost to Council of the current regulations, The cost to council is 7.898% of total rate revenue generated. This amount is applied to native tree programs. The largest cost item the road resealing budget is tree management which exceeds the cost of the expensive bitumen used to resurface worn out old roads (copy of page 11 of Shire Budget 2003/2004 is attached).

ENOUGH OF THE HARD STUFF:
Bird life is attracted to wooded areas and I have noted considerable populations of native birds raising their prodigy along side busy (and Bushy) roads. It is extremely distressing as a motorist to kill whole flights of native parrots in one single bird strike incident. This has happened to me a number of times when at IOOkph I have hit at least a dozen very small highly colourful parrots when their flight path has clashed with my vehicle. A census on the number of magpies that survive their first year living alongside busy roads, has estimated losses to vehicles are over 90% of all young birds.
The count of dead magpies splattered on our roads in September each year is alarming

Our wonderful koala "dumb as all hell" they take up residence on the Hume Freeway in my district, they just love during breeding season to sit in the middle of the moonlit road admiring their wonderful native habitat. During an official early morning meeting at Seymour I drove with Shire Chief Executive Officer along the 50km to Seymour and return one hour later to Euroa. We counted a confirmed 27 fresh kills (Koalas) in one night, is this not mass slaughter and are we not facilitating this mass slaughter of defenceless animals?

ROAD SAFETY
Large trees alongside any road are a danger to any vehicles using that road and we have uncounted numbers of trees near almost every road, freeway and highway, this is often a fatal hazard for the occupants of any vehicle driving on that road if a accident happens. There is a strong argument for all trees to be at least 20 metre from the road carriage-way-surface: 20m is less than a required safety margin for a 100 kph accident on any road. Large trees close to roads surfaces have a negative impact on the road surface as the root systems damage quality road construction and hinder maintenance.

Freeways and highways like the Hume should have no trees at all and road safety should be enhanced by growing hedges and low native bush plants up to 2 m high that can be regularly trimmed with the ability to quickly pull up a vehicle with minimal structural damage. Sounds too simple to me and would be a preferred option to the steel cable protectors currently used with the result that the shredding of a stray motor bike rider is an unpleasant option.

Where the vision, human life can not be sacrificed to pander to the green movement; it can be argued that the greenies are negligent in trying to build and extend habitat in roadside and median strips, as a result creating hazardous environments, Roadsides are not the place to build kindergartens. (Bird, human, or animal.)
Enclosed are simple examples in the form of photographs.