Page 3904 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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situations will have to wait on occasions for 45 minutes or longer. They have always had to wait that period of time. They certainly had to wait that period of time on occasions under Mr Berry's ministry.
However, our response times for emergencies are considerably better than that, and I am very proud of them. The latest available figures indicate, in fact, that our response time has dropped from 8.2 minutes to 7.4 minutes. That is a very significant improvement and I think it is worth acknowledging that fact. Those are average response times; they cannot always be guaranteed but they are pretty good. I think that 7.4 minutes is a pretty good response time, and I think that overall the service is doing pretty well.
MS FOLLETT (Leader of the Opposition) (3.51): Mr Speaker, I believe that the situation that Mr Berry has outlined to us today represents a crisis for our community. That is the reason why it has been raised in this Assembly as a matter of public importance. It is of great regret to me that some members of this Assembly have treated this crisis in a jocular manner and others seem to regard it as some sort of test of masculinity. That is a debating style that I find totally alien and totally inappropriate to this topic.
The situation with the Ambulance Service, Mr Speaker, represents a crisis for the community because it means, quite simply, that the community cannot be confident, as it has the right to be confident, that an ambulance will be available when it is needed. It is also a crisis, I believe, for the Ambulance Service itself. If you look at the figures that Mr Berry has put before us today it is quite clear that the people operating the Ambulance Service are operating under conditions of the most dire stress.
As Mr Berry said, there have been 112 requirements for overtime shifts, in other words, 25 per cent of the total shifts. Mr Berry has provided the figures that 57 of those shifts were not covered; in other words, 57 of those shifts were actually short staffed. I accept that the officers of the Ambulance Service are dedicated and professional people. I believe for them to operate under those sorts of conditions puts them under enormous stress. That would affect their whole lives, quite apart from their working lives, and would probably place their families under stress as well.
As I said, Mr Speaker, it is essential that the community has confidence that the Ambulance Service will be up to scratch when it is needed. I would like to refer to a statement that Mr Humphries has just made regarding that service. Everybody in this Assembly knows that it is a minimum requirement for the Ambulance Service that there be four ambulances operating 24 hours a day. We have heard from Mr Humphries, the Minister responsible, that that is the case "as often as is physically possible". I regard
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