Page 4695 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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that interservice cooperation since the ACT Government made some fairly difficult decisions - against massive opposition from the Liberals - to rationalise the police rescue service, to give the Fire Service prime responsibility for road rescue. All of those tensions that we saw a few years ago are no longer there. The services are operating together like clockwork.
It is quite common, in a situation where you have very badly injured people in the ambulance, for the senior ambulance officer in charge to request police or fire officers to drive. The request is frequently made to police officers, as it is usually traffic officers who are on the scene because of the various duties at a motor vehicle accident, and it is fairly generally accepted, and properly so, that those men and women in the traffic squad are probably the best drivers in Canberra. They are all very well trained drivers. Apart from their other duties, they are just very good drivers. It is not uncommon for the ambulance officer to say to the senior police officer on the scene, "Could we please have a police officer to drive the ambulance so that we can have both our paramedics in the back, providing a service to the badly injured people?". In the spirit of cooperation that is now present in the emergency services as a result of the efforts of this Labor Government, which some years ago you people tried to stop, the police will do that. It is quite common, as Mr Stefaniak says, that a police officer will drive the ambulance to Woden Valley Hospital - this is almost always done in major trauma cases, so it is almost always to Woden Valley Hospital - while the two paramedics are in the back, providing emergency treatment.
That is a very sensible, cooperative arrangement. It is not an indication of resource problems in our ambulance services. Our ambulance services are of a very high standard, although Mr Humphries would prefer us to spend the money on buying a helicopter, which we hardly ever use. We prefer to put the money into our road ambulance services. All of them, for example, have heart-starting equipment. Members may recall a few years ago that one of our media tycoons who had to be heart-started after a game of polo, with great fanfare, presented a few of these kits to the New South Wales Ambulance Service. They had to rely on the charity of a media baron, because the New South Wales Government had not provided them with the gear. That gear is on any ACT ambulance.
MR STEFANIAK: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I hear what the Minister says in relation to our very fine and often overstretched Ambulance Service, and I am quite aware of the fine job that ambulance people do. However, is the Minister concerned that this redirection of police resources is taking mobile response units off the road for long periods?
MR CONNOLLY: No, I am not. I think this is a sensible example of the sort of cooperation that people in the field in emergency services provide to one another. Quite frequently, another police vehicle will be diverted. As in the case that I saw, what will often happen is that one police officer will drive the ambulance and another police officer will drive the police vehicle flat out down Northbourne Avenue, at about 140 kilometres an hour, and park the police vehicle at an intersection, with the light flashing, in order to allow the ambulance to go straight through the intersection. That is not uncommon. I am asked whether I think that that involves the diversion of police resources. The answer is no. I think that is an example of the police and the Ambulance Service working well together in the interests of the community.
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