Page 3912 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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We expect quality staff to operate in our Ambulance Service, quality staff that we are confident in because we know they are well trained. You cannot expect people to be constantly working overtime, constantly working extended hours, and provide the standard of care that we expect. The country watched recently as Mr Packer's well-publicised need for an ambulance was on the front page of every newspaper and leading every electronic media bulletin. We learnt then that it is the ambulance officer that is the first provider of care, and it is the trained expert ambulance officer who, by applying proper paramedical attention in the first instance after an incident, can often be the difference between life and death.
We assume that the men and women of the Ambulance Service will be able to provide that quality of service day in and day out, but if they are working day in and day out individually, if they are working through weekends and constantly doing overtime and not being able to take the appropriate time off, we cannot expect these men and women to be constantly performing at that very high level. Ambulance officers are, after all, only people; they are not machines. They cannot be expected to perform constantly at that very high level. And that is a matter of real concern, a matter of public importance which we properly raised. I think it is very disappointing that the Government has attempted to trivialise that point.
As I said, the people of this Territory have assumed that they are adequately protected by the ambulance service. They, quite properly, rest their confidence in the ACT Ambulance Service and the Ambulance Service provides, when required, an adequate return in that confidence; but when the service is constantly undermanned, when the assumed four ambulances at any one time are not there, the community often has a misplaced confidence - not in the service, not in the individual ambulance officers and ambulance crews, but in the assumption that an ambulance will always be there when required.
If we are not keeping to this minimum requirement of four ambulances, the community is indeed, as Mr Berry said, being short-changed. If the Government is now saying that this minimum requirement of four ambulances is not a minimum requirement but merely some goal that we may or may not meet from day to day, the community has real cause for concern. The community has real cause to demand of this Minister an accurate accounting of how many services are provided at any one time. He should stand condemned for his failure to do that.
MR MOORE (4.18): Mr Deputy Speaker, it seems to me that the most significant factor involved with this situation is that so many times last year we had Mr Humphries, then in opposition, asking Mr Berry a series of questions about ambulances and always drawing attention to the fact that the people of the ACT were not getting what they expected
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