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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2394 ..

MR PRATT

May of this year to get the contracts signed. You would have thought that the lessons from the December 2001 fires would have been pretty stark, particularly the lessons going to the heart of command and control, and that the need for the immediate introduction of a computer aided dispatch system would have been very clear. But it has taken all this time, and that is just not good enough.

The concept and the equipment have been identified. In fact, it was really only a case of looking at what the New South Wales forces had in service, and I see that we are now looking at perhaps adopting a system similar to what they have. Why could not the Treasurer's Advance or supplementary appropriation bills been brought into play to hasten the acquisition and introduction of this vital system?

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I also note that there are questions about the actual funding and the spending of the funds applicable to that program. The government will have to answer all of those questions about CAD funding. Mainly, though, the government is on notice to expedite the outstanding CAD system and, more broadly, to do something about command and control generally right across the range of different activities carried out by emergency services.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I would like to speak about the lessons to be learnt in respect of how the Emergency Services Bureau may need to be reorganised and what will need to be done about its equipment. A recently handed down audit report talks about a number of interesting areas. This report, which was commenced after the fires of 2001 and was completed I think a number of months ago, points out some very serious issues that relate to the acquisition of emergency services equipment. It states, for example, that funds have not been made available for the purchase of major equipment and that this was not specified in budget documents-certainly for last year, and that would seem to be the case now.

The report points out that the management of funds for the acquisition of equipment is insufficient and inefficient. It goes on to say that current annual funding for the replacement of the Emergency Services Bureau's ambulances, fire appliances and other operational vehicles is considerably less than what is needed to simply maintain bottom line resources. So there does not seem to be an acquisition plan in place to make sure that the essential core equipment is replaced and kept up to speed.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the report goes on to say that the bureau has no approved program to replace its operational vehicles and major operational equipment, and in that context we can talk about communication kits as well as fire fighting appliances. We have seen for some time a lot of concern and complaints expressed by people in field emergency units about the state of communication equipment. We have talked about that a number of times in this place.

It would seem that at least there is funding now in place to expedite the outstanding issue of operational communication equipment. But I would implore the government to get on with it. Don't conduct another two-year trial but see if we can hasten the introduction into service of this badly needed equipment, certainly in time for next season. Like the computer aided dispatch equipment, it has been a long time coming. The sorts of issues that are a concern are frequencies and reception capabilities.

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