Under questioning from Greens leader Cassy O’Connor on Tuesday, Mr Hidding told a committee on  government business enterprises that the government was spending ‘‘a fortune on road safety’’.

Mr Hidding said some of the funding would be used to increase the number of police officers on Tasmanian streets.

Ms O’Connor called on Mr Hidding to commit to using the $144 million dividend to fund road safety, and said MAIB’s funding to the Road Safety Advisory Council was ‘‘fairly static’’.

‘‘With road safety demonstrably not improving, the government have a moral responsibility to dip into the dividend sitting in the Treasurer’s vault  to increase road safety funding,’’ Ms O’Connor said in a statement.

‘‘Given the alarming road safety statistics and the substantial increase in revenue from MAIB in dividends, the government has no choice but to invest more in saving the lives of Tasmanian road users.’’

MAIB chairman Don Challen said the MAIB funded road safety through ‘‘a number of guises’’, including RSAC, the Injury Prevention and Management Foundation and by contributing to Tasmania Police, the Tasmania Fire Service and the State Emergency Service.

‘‘We have fingers in quite a few road safety pies,’’ Mr Challen told the committee.

In a statement, Treasurer Peter Gutwein said it was normal for all governments to reinvest dividends from government-owned businesses into frontline services  such as health, education and police.

Mr Hidding was also quizzed on MAIB increasing the dividend it provides to government from 50 per cent of after-tax profits (averaged over profits of the last five years) to 60 per cent, for a three-year period.

Under questioning from Labor leader Bryan Green about the appropriateness of the increase given that MAIB also transferred a special dividend of $1 million to the government, Mr Challen defended the move.

‘‘We had two incredibly strong years in 2013-14 and 2014-15 and boosted the funding ratio considerably,’’ Mr Challen said.