Page 3876 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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were up to 100 kilometres per hour. In the view of the VBA, those towers should have been manned at first light and they should still have been manned beyond 5.00 pm.
There is something rotten in the way that strategic decisions are taking place. There is a crisis of confidence in the services. Leadership is failing; poor strategic decisions are being made; and our men and women are being let down. (Time expired.)
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella) (4.13): I thank Mr Pratt for raising the matter of public importance today.
Mr Pratt: I didn’t raise it.
MR GENTLEMAN: There is no doubt that our emergency services are an important part of ensuring the safety of the ACT community, and they are very effective at undertaking this task.
Mr Pratt: I know I might look handsome, but it was Mr Mulcahy that you are talking about.
MR GENTLEMAN: I am sure it was yours, Mr Pratt. The services within the Emergency Services Agency manage around 41,000 incidents per year. That involves around 53,000 responses. This means that there is an average of 112 incidents per day that our emergency services deal with in an extremely effective manner. I would like to refer to some of the performance measures that are set out for our emergency services.
Firstly, I go to the ACT Ambulance Service, which has seen an increase in the demand for its services. As reported in the 2006-07 annual report, the increase in demand was nearly eight per cent on the previous year. Despite this increase, they are still performing well in their response times. The ACT Ambulance Service attends almost 30,000 incidents a year, involving almost 33,000 responses; they attend to 50 per cent of their emergency incidents in eight minutes and 16 seconds. Their performance target for this category is eight minutes. They are also responding to 90 per cent in 14 minutes and 21 seconds, against a performance target of 12 minutes and 30 seconds.
Given the decrease in spare ambulance availability due to the continuing increase in demand for ambulance services, as well as delayed patient off-load at hospital emergency departments, this is a wonderful achievement by the Ambulance Service. The ACT government has recognised this increase in demand for ambulance services and in this year’s budget is providing funding for an additional 16 ambulance staff, two additional intensive-care ambulances, one additional non-urgent patient transport vehicle and a bariatric ambulance for the transport of morbidly obese patients.
Another positive outcome for our Ambulance Service is that during the 2006-07 period a survey of patient satisfaction showed that 96 to 97 per cent of patients are very satisfied or satisfied with the patient treatment provided to them by the territory’s Ambulance Service. It should also be noted that ambulance officers were again named the “most trusted profession” in Australia—for the fifth successive year—in the Reader’s Digest magazine’s annual survey.
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