Page 4038 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 30 October 2013
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Let me turn to the issue of the requirement for a second Bronto. At no time has the government ever received advice or recommendation from ACT Fire and Rescue for a second Bronto. I would have thought that the operational leaders of the Fire and Rescue service would be best placed to make the judgement about whether or not there should be a second aerial fire-fighting appliance for the ACT Fire and Rescue service. It is not my call on that; I rely on the advice of our operational leaders. As minister, that is the appropriate thing to do. At no time have they come to me and said, “We need a second Bronto.” If they do, it will be given appropriate consideration.
It is worth also making the point that no consistent standard is applied within Australia for the ratio of these aerial appliances to city size or building density. No consistent methodology is applied. It is an operational assessment best undertaken by operational leaders and with consideration to practice in other places.
Mr Smyth wants to know about post-incident debriefs. Mr Smyth was recently provided with a related answer on this matter during the estimates hearing in June this year—in June this year. Further to what I have already told him, I can advise Mr Smyth that ACT Fire and Rescue undertake regular post-incident reviews to identify learnings and potential improvements. For example, post-deployment reviews were conducted following the return of Fire and Rescue personnel from interstate deployments during the recent fires in New South Wales. So we have an established process and it is an ongoing one.
Mr Smyth seems to think that there are out-of-date PODs. I can advise Mr Smyth that ACT Fire and Rescue currently has no—I repeat, none, nil, zero—platform on demand units that could be described as out of date. If Mr Smyth thinks that is wrong, I will be very happy to arrange a meeting between him and the Chief Officer of Fire and Rescue or, perhaps even better, the ESA commissioner, to disabuse him of his misunderstanding on this as well as on many other matters.
In relation to the ACT Ambulance Service, the government has made substantial investments in improving the capability of our ambulance service to meet growth in demand for services. As organisational behaviour and culture are integral to maintaining service standards, it is timely, therefore, following this period of growth, to have an assessment of the arrangements that support culture and behaviour in the Ambulance Service. This approach is supported by the union that represents ambulance officers. I think this is a sensible thing to do in response to significant growth in the organisation, and it is, indeed, timely that we now undertake that work.
Mr Smyth continues to scare Canberrans when it comes to the issue of cardiac monitors and defibrillators. People, rightly, expect that, if the worst happens and they have a heart attack or a friend or family member does, the ambulance officers that respond have equipment that enables them to deal with that heart attack. Well, at no point in time have these defibrillators operated in a manner that meant they did not work in terms of the electric shock treatment. We are talking about two minor technical problems with the defibrillators which were not identified during the extensive multi-month trialling period but were, instead, identified as a result of software loaded onto the defibrillators that were subsequently provided after the end
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