Page 3909 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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MR DUBY: You have been told on numerous occasions that that has not occurred, yet I notice that in your media release here today we have this statement, "The staffing levels have been down to as low as 1.5 crews". That is simply not true; that is simply inaccurate. The statistics are there. The reports from the Ambulance Service are there to show that that is not the case. As I said, there have been no instances where ambulances have operated with an unqualified crew. It is a standard operations policy of the service that every ambulance which is deployed is crewed by a fully qualified ambulance officer, preferably with advanced life support qualifications, and an assistant, who could well be a second fully qualified ambulance officer or a training ambulance officer. In this context, ambulances are sent out with qualified crews.
Mr Berry: There has never been one sent out with one person in; never, ever, guaranteed?
Mr Humphries: He did not say that. You were not listening.
MR DUBY: I did not say that. The reason that there may well be staffing difficulties at the moment is that regular long service leave is calculated in a certain way. The rostered staff of the Ambulance Service accumulate nine weeks of leave each year, which includes recreation leave of four weeks, public holiday leave of two weeks, a shift-worker allowance of one week and rostered days off for two weeks. The current staffing arrangements are adequate to allow the service to roster all leave in each 12-month period. As I said earlier, no recreation leave is held beyond a year's entitlement as annual leave has been rostered for each officer.
The service has sufficient staff to be able to fully monitor and aim for the ideal case of four fully operational ambulances operating within the city at any one time. We have heard examples of how awful it is that people have had to wait 55 minutes for an ambulance as a result of a car accident when they have a broken jaw or whatever. That is in the nature and the course of events. Even if, at all times, four fully operational ambulances were available within the ACT, the time is eventually going to come, Mr Berry, when those four ambulances are going to be fully utilised at the one time and there is going to be a fifth person, or a fifth situation, demanding an ambulance and the ambulance is simply not going to be able to attend within an appropriate response time. What I am suggesting to you is that the very fact that you can cite an example where someone unfortunately may have had to wait for up to an hour to receive ambulance attention is not an indication that the service is not operating on the guidelines that are set down for the efficient operation of ambulance services in this Territory.
Mr Wood: Too bad if it is a fatal heart attack.
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