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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Thursday, 19 August 2004) . . Page.. 3925 ..

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Pratt will cease interjecting.

MR WOOD: This has been a major project of this government, which is interested in looking after the people of this city. In early 2003, after an exhaustive evaluation of tenders from around the world, the government selected Fujitsu to introduce this state-of-the-art system, which has a budget of just over $2.5 million. Last Monday the system went live for the first time. This system is similar to the systems that are presently being used by some 50 fire and ambulance services in the United Kingdom.

An earlier version of the system has been in place in the New South Wales fire brigades for six years. This is the first time that this system has been implemented in a multi-service environment—the four arms of the Emergency Services Authority—and that is what makes it so unique. Another thing that makes the ACT system so unique is its advanced mapping capability, which will enable communication centre operators to view the ACT region across a range of scales in a vast degree of detail. Using the highest satellite imagery now available, the new CAD is able to provide images of individual properties, allowing operators to view detail such as adjacent exposures to a structure fire.

The new CAD system is the first in Australia to incorporate the newly developed geo-coded national address file system, which enables it to physically pinpoint over 237,000 residential and rural addresses inside the ACT and surrounding New South Wales. The mobile data system will now ensure that calls of emergency are responded to by the nearest suitable unit in the shortest possible time. Callers seeking help on the phone may not notice a difference but the data stored in the new CAD system will help to ensure that they get faster service from better-informed crews who are ready to hit the ground running. The new CAD system will also help the Emergency Services Authority to set priorities and allocate resources more effectively. In order to ensure that Mr Pratt does not continue to ask silly questions, I invite him and any of his colleagues—I am sure Mr Smyth would be interested—to view this fine system.

Schools—capital works and repairs and maintenance programs

MS MacDONALD: Mr Speaker, my question, through you, is to Ms Gallagher, the Minister for Education and Training. Over the past couple of days there has been significant interest from various media outlets about the capital works and repairs and maintenance budget for the Department of Education and Training. Minister, can you please inform the Assembly of the current capital works program being implemented within the department for the benefit of school communities?

MS GALLAGHER: I thank Ms MacDonald for the question. The government is investing significant funds in providing new and improved education facilities as part of our capital works program. In 2003-04 this amounted to over $9.6 million for new works in schools, in addition to financing continuing projects from prior years totalling more than $20 million.

The government is committed to ensuring that the high-quality education provided in ACT schools is matched by the quality of our education facilities. To do this, we are not

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