Page 1452 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 1993
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willing to make changes to facilitate that very premise upon which I started this speech: Such an inquiry should now be saying, "Okay; we have done this much. We have that established; we have that set. Those inquiries have taken place with regard to those past reviews. They are done. What are we going to do now to get further efficiencies?".
It seems to me that when we are looking at emergency services throughout the Territory - police, fire, ambulance, road rescue services - there still is significant room for amalgamation. I suppose that it is not beyond the pale to think that there will be a time when it is possible to have one force. That is possible. I suppose that most of us would be reluctant to see that happen straightaway because we see the roles of these emergency services in quite different ways, but when you consider the style of training they go through, with the exception of the police for the moment, it is not difficult to see a full amalgamation elsewhere. The police force is becoming much more community oriented. That had an initial start under Mr Collaery but has come much further under Mr Connolly and the two acting commissioners of police, Mr Bates and Mr Dawson, who have also worked hard to ensure that they have a community police service.
It is not such a difficult thing to imagine that there may be a time in the next decade or so when those services could be totally amalgamated, and I think that would be to the good of the community as a whole. There would be huge problems, but that is the sort of forward looking inquiry I would like to see. Such an inquiry should take the perspective of saying, "We have got this far now. What are the long-term goals or the long-term aims? What can we achieve? Can we pull them together or can we not pull them together?". The antipathy between the unions involved - not necessarily the members but the unions, the firies and the police - has not been conducive to that sort of outcome, and that is why I think it would be a long-term project.
The important thing, and I emphasise it for the last time as I close my speech, is that my support for this motion is dependent on the fact that the things that have been decided up to now by the previous inquiries are not open for renegotiation. That is not what this is about. This is an inquiry that looks forward, and that is how I see the condition of my support.
MS SZUTY (4.23): Madam Speaker, I wish to speak briefly to this motion and to draw on some of the comments my colleague Mr Moore has made during this debate. The history of the problems in rescue services has been well documented, with claim and counterclaim being lodged by the police rescue service and the Fire Brigade over who should attend road accidents and in what circumstances. We have also witnessed the unfortunate spectacle of rescue services criticising each other during the aftermath of some of the ACT's more tragic accidents.
In a previous debate on the continuing conflict between the road rescue services I quoted a case reported in the press where officers at the scene argued publicly about who was responsible for attendance at that accident, which included a fatality. Madam Speaker, the situation at that time distressed me greatly, yet the matter appeared to subside. However, as a member of this Assembly, I am aware that the jockeying for position has continued, and there have been representations made by the Police Association and public relations exercises conducted by the Fire Brigade, all aimed at shoring up support for their legitimacy to act in rescue situations.
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