Page 136 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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Let us be fair: most of the other jurisdictions, if not all the other jurisdictions, have also seen a decline in volunteer numbers. This is apparently due to a fall in volunteers in fire service organisations, so questions need to be asked. Let us do some scholarly analysis, shall we? We apparently have a problem. The minister, who has the data, will hopefully come down and respond, and then perhaps as an Assembly we can come up with solutions. But unless you hold the government to account, instead of mouthing platitudes and excuses, nothing will ever change.
Let us turn to ambulance services. Remember, there was a very critical report—perhaps you could call it a scholarly analysis—of the delivery of ambulance services in the ACT community done by none other than the Auditor-General. That was a damning indictment of response times, which caused the personal attack from the Chief Minister on the Auditor-General and all its implied threats. He does not like the bad news. But here is another report that actually confirms the findings made by the Auditor-General. If you go to the table showing the number of qualified officers, you see that the ACT is the only jurisdiction to record a fall in qualified ambulance officers during 2008-09. That is in complete contrast to all of the jurisdictions. I hope that is scholarly enough for you, Ms Hunter. We are the only jurisdiction to record a fall.
So what is going on with this critical aspect of operations within the ACT Ambulance Service? Where is the minister? What is the excuse this time? Who is responsible for this adverse record in the ACT in contrast to all other jurisdictions? As Mr Seselja says, this is a scathing appraisal of the performance of the ACT government.
Let us go to the analysis in figure 9.29, the analysis of ambulance response times. Again, the ACT is the standout performer for all the wrong reasons. Ambulance response times in the ACT have increased for each of the past five years in contrast to the performance of virtually all other jurisdictions. So why are we going backwards? Why are we the only jurisdiction to go backwards? That is the purpose of this motion today. It is to hold the government to account, to seek answers and to ensure that they put solutions in place.
We had asked some questions on this entire matter after the Auditor-General’s report, and it is interesting, because I got an answer, finally, from Ms Burch, who must have been the acting minister on the day. I asked the question in annual reports hearings: can you provide the number of times an ACT Fire Brigade vehicle has attended an ACT Ambulance Service call-out in a first-response capacity as an ambulance when an ambulance was unavailable? The answer was as follows: the ACT Fire Brigade responded to a total of 241 medical assistance calls during the 2008-09 financial year; however, not all of these are results of an ACT Ambulance Service intensive care ambulance being unavailable.
It is standard procedure that, when there are not enough ambulances—and that is a question for another day—you do respond with a Fire Brigade vehicle. That is okay, because the Fire Brigade officers are trained to do this. But it does beg the question. That happened 241 times; that is five a week. Five times a week if you had rung for an ambulance and were expecting an ambulance you got a Fire Brigade truck. So there is
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