Community Involvement and Benefits
Community Support
Targa Tasmania may deliver over $10 million tourist dollars to the State each year, it may provide a focus for Governments to promote Tasmania as not only beautiful but exciting, and it may go out of its way to aggressively hype up the competition, create its own bit of controversy and occasional confrontation in the world of motorsport. However, behind that necessarily brash and bold exterior, Targa Tasmania hides its own soft centre which is working to give back to the very community that supports it. Targa Tasmania uses all public roads for the Targa Stages - some of these roads 
being major highways through mountain passes. The roads are closed to the public for four and a half hours whilst the competition is conducted, and with nearly 40 targa stages making up the event in 2009, there is an overall community acceptance of the concept of Targa Tasmania for it to occur year after year.
Community responsibility is exercised to the utmost in planning the event. Relevant Government departments, municipal councils, service clubs, transport groups, affected businesses and, most importantly, the residents along the targa stage routes, are consulted to minimise disruption and to encourage their participation.
A Spectators Delight
The 200,000 or more spectators who turn out to watch Targa Tasmania each year are encouraged to use the spectator viewing areas set up by the organisers. These are chosen for their excellent viewing of competitors in action, and for their safe location. In all cases, access is free - a rare privilege these days.
Add to this the $10 million economic benefit to the State each year, and it is not hard to understand why the people of Tasmania place their support behind Targa Tasmania, put up with the occasional mild inconvenience and generally see the huge "big picture" benefits that the event delivers.
Lions and other Animals
From the Lions Club of Emu Bay to the Rotarians of Moonah, to the many school parents and friends groups, a whole network of voluntary groups provide lunch stops or run vehicle expos as their major fundraising project of the year. In turn, these funds are put back into the local communities.
Schools Out
Schools are also prominent in their involvement with Targa - many schools participate in the glamorous official starts and finishes with displays, dancing and singing and as flag bearers. Other schools provide a host of quick-witted youngsters who help out with the scoring as Targa stages pass through their locality - after all, if you want to program the video player, who do you turn to? So too with the Targa technology, which is handled with ease by anyone under the age of 25!
Competitor Power
On the Sunday before Targa each year, a very special group of excited children are taken to Country Club Tasmania and given the thrill of a lifetime. Targa competitors roll up in their cars and provide rides for the disabled kids in conjunction with sponsor Pure Tasmania.
Competitors and their cars are also organised by Targa to make appearances in any number of town parades, Christmas pageants and other activities such as shopping centre displays and local car club events.
Charitable Arms
Targa Tasmania also targets numerous charities to benefit from its involvement with the event each year. In 2008, Targa Tasmania raised over $100,000 in 30 minutes through the sale of unique number plates, Peter Brock Framed Memorabillia and Special Anzac Day Picture and donated this money to the Royal Hobart Hospital Research Foundation.
Star Attractions
Last but not least, many entries into Targa Tasmania are not the big-ticket entries that is its public face, but battlers with an in-built passion for the sport. What is so nice to see as you move around the event is the unqualified help that this group of drivers receives from the higher-profile entrants. It is nothing to see Grant Denyer and Jim Richards chatting and giving last-minute advice to other competitors or moving over from their half-million dollar machines to help with a problem on a shoestring entry worth less than a hundredth of their own car. When anyone thinks of Targa Tasmania it is usually as an exciting spectacle of gleaming machinery, streaming through glorious Tasmanian countryside or thrilling the crowds on the city stages of Georgetown, Longford, New Norfolk and Hobart.
But there is a quieter and thoughtful, community-minded undercurrent to the event which doesn't often surface, but which is always there, year after year. It is typified by management's determination that the event, the biggest in Tasmania, should give back to the very community that supports it.
2,000 volunteers turn out at all times of the day or night, in all weathers, to help get the mobile motor show on the road each year. This happens for most people over a six-day period in late April, when the weather is, to say the least, variable. No direct reward could possibly compensate these stalwarts, nor is proper compensation sought - theirs is a love of motorsport (or the love of a spouse whose love is motorsport!). Instead the Tasmanian community as a whole is the winner.
