Page 3896 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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broken jaw and other trauma. She had to wait 55 minutes for an ambulance while the fourth operational ambulance crew was just 1 minutes away, but it was under contract to the local race meeting and could not leave. The practice has developed that, instead of putting an extra crew on, on the basis of costs they are using operational ambulance crews to cover contracts to sports events instead of providing services to the community. That is what this Minister has done in the year after he raised his concerns about it.
Mr Speaker, immediately the concerns were raised with the Labor Party when in office we moved to fix them, and we handed over a process whereby a plan was being developed to fix the Ambulance Service, but this Minister could not pick up the baton and run with it. He conveniently forgot about it immediately he took office.
Last night a Canberra medical centre required an ambulance for an asthmatic. It had to wait unduly until an ambulance had completed another job, and that was because there were insufficient ambulances on duty to cover the situation. There have been three other occasions when one person, contrary to the standard set by the Ambulance Service and contrary to the public position that has been announced by this Minister, has been required to go out on a job alone. That is not a standard that anybody would set in a modern ambulance service.
At the start of today's shift, I was informed, there were 2.5 ambulance crews available, that is, there were only two ambulances available in the ACT. The 0.5 does not count for an ambulance because an ambulance does not respond with less than two qualified crew members unless - - -
Mr Humphries: Did that ever happen when you were Minister?
MR BERRY: You have to take the responsibility for this now, Minister, because you are the Minister. You are the one who had concerns about it, and you are the one who has had control of it for almost a year and you have done nothing; you have let it wither on the vine. Sick leave amongst ambulance officers is at its highest in the service's history, and that is because of the inaction of this Minister. There is no doubt that it is the inaction of this Minister that has caused that.
The increased workload on the ambulance officers - and they are the ones I am particularly concerned about - has led to a build-up of critical incident stress. Those who have worked in emergency services would understand the impact of that, and the cumulative effect of working extra shifts and of being involved in the sorts of circumstances that ambulance officers and other emergency workers are involved in. Because they are working so much additional overtime as a result of the Government's inaction and the Government's inability to get its recruiting processes into
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