Page 140 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 2018
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Members will note that on their tables there is a copy of my amendment to Minister Gentleman’s amendment, inserting a paragraph 3(d). I never thought I would get to the point of being able to do these things. It asks the minister to explain how we arrived at the position where the service was under minimum crewing for 41.5 per cent of the time in the previous financial year.
I understand the arguments of everybody on the other side of the chamber that that measure may or may not be appropriate. It is, nonetheless, the measure that the government put in place for their own service. There has not been an explanation in the debate to this point as to why we had that measure in the first place, although I have given an explanation. It is stated in the government’s documents that that was based on a decision that was made about that being the necessary minimum crewing for the ACT.
While I understand that there may be a revisiting of it, I will still term that a changing of the goalposts because I am assuming, without any information to the contrary, that those minimum crewing levels were in place for a purpose and with some study behind them. I am not saying that measurements should never change or should never become more meaningful. But at this point in the debate there has been no reason given why that really is not a decent measure of a service which is increasingly under demand from an increasing population. I still think it is incumbent on the minister to explain to the community why we have got to this point.
In the debate Mr Rattenbury asserted that my bringing this motion here today was about me. That is very flattering, but in reality I have sat down with ambulance officers. I was not aware of minimum crewing levels until it was raised with me by members of the Ambulance Service. It is reasonable for them to raise it because they are obviously convinced that it is at least a reasonable measure of staffing requirements.
Minister Gentleman made it very clear in his speech that there are times when there are not enough staff to achieve minimum crewing levels and that there is a need to backfill. That need to backfill is what I am alerting the minister to. The Ambulance Service officers are saying that it is putting them under too much stress. I accept that the government has come up with a solution, for the time being, to that ongoing problem. But there has not been an explanation as to why we arrived at that position in the first place and really as to why we would change the measure.
We might get to that in a future debate or a future ministerial statement, but at this point I still think the community deserves an explanation now that this information has come to light, which is not something that I have made up or something, as Minister Rattenbury suggested, I have created to make myself more popular. I actually have a genuine concern for the men and women of the Ambulance Service, as I think the minister probably does as well. But I do not think we are serving them as well as we could be up to this point, and they deserve an explanation.
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Minister for Planning and Land
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