Page 194 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 12 February 2020
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Commissioner Whelan, the Chief Minister and me, and our other government spokespeople during the recent state of alert and state of emergency.
As we have already noted many times in this place, the tireless efforts of our team of teams ensured that the Canberra community remained well informed and well prepared throughout this bushfire season. The Auslan interpreters who have been supporting the ESA—Mandy, Alana, Bek, Rhonda, and Susan—have done a terrific job over the past few weeks, and I join the Canberra community in commending them for their excellent work.
The ACT Emergency Services Agency has the responsibility for communicating information about emergency events to the public via the ESA’s website and social networking platforms as well as media outlets. Providing effective messaging to all sectors of the community, including the deaf and hard of hearing community, is vitally important to ensure the safety of the public.
Australian sign language, more commonly known as Auslan, is used to convey communications in a visual way. The most important thing for Auslan interpreters, as well as the ESA, during an emergency is that deaf people receive the exact same message that people of hearing do. And I will say in regard to Ms Lawder’s comments on instructions to media camera operators that they are instructed, of course, to include wide-framing of the Auslan interpreter to ensure the message does go through.
The ESA has an MOU and a partnership agreement with the Deaf Society of New South Wales for the provision of Auslan translators to attend media conferences during major emergencies and disasters in the ACT. The step is already in place. The Deaf Society of New South Wales is the peak body for the deaf and people with hearing impairment in New South Wales and the ACT. However, the issue faced by the ESA was a lack of suitably qualified interpreters available. Ms Lawder has spoken on that today. I understand other states may have similar issues. I thank Ms Lawder for an opportunity to set out to the Canberra community the lengths that ESA went to in the face of this potentially national issue.
ESA was adaptive and took immediate action to address feedback on the use of Auslan interpreters and captions during broadcasts to the community during the recent state of alert and state of emergency. All efforts were made to ensure that appropriate interpretation or captioning was provided during press conferences, announcements and briefings so that members of our deaf community remained well informed. It should be noted that the Auslan interpreters are relied on heavily during emergencies such as Australia’s bushfire crisis and are in high demand when such widespread events occur.
Most Canberrans will now be familiar with the territory’s only fully certified Auslan interpreter, Ms Amanda Dolejsi, as we have heard, better known as Mandy. Mandy has been in high demand this summer and there were many days when she was needed at Parliament House before joining us at the ESA headquarters. Given that there are a minimal number of trained interpreters available in the ACT and New South Wales and only one level 3-trained interpreter in the ACT, the ESA actively made arrangements for alternative methods of messaging for the deaf and hard-of-
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