Page 182 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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I will highlight some of the work that the government has already done: since 2007 an extra $11.6 million has been provided to the Ambulance Service. That has been to help recruit 30 additional staff to key areas of the Ambulance Service. Some $1.7 million of that resourcing has been dedicated to 14 new—extra—frontline positions to help manage demand, particularly during peak services. We have also invested in improving the capital equipment of the Ambulance Service. We have replaced since 2007 every single ambulance in the Ambulance Service with a new vehicle. We have put in place new equipment, like new stretchers. We have replaced all the cardiac monitors in all of our ambulances so we have state-of-the-art equipment to assist our ambulance officers in dealing with those life-threatening incidents.
The government is doing more work to address these issues. In close coordination and close consultation with representatives of ambulance officers, such as the union representing the officer—the Transport Workers Union—we have put in place a detailed review of all the operations of our Ambulance Service to make sure that we fully understand where all the pressures are into the future, what needs to be done to address those and what the priority areas need to be. This will be an ongoing process for government and for the Canberra community. As our population continues to age, as we continue to see growth in demand and as we continue to see some of the problems as a result of shortages in other parts of the health work force, such as GPs, demands on our Ambulance Service are going to continue to increase.
The government will keep working with ambulance officers, with ambulance management and with the emergency services agency to ensure that we have a contemporary, well-resourced ambulance service capable of meeting the needs of our community into the future, and that is our commitment.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hargreaves, a supplementary?
MR HARGREAVES: Could the minister please outline the ways response times are recorded in relation to ACT Ambulance Service call-outs in comparison to other jurisdictions?
MR CORBELL: This, I think, is an important question—and I thank Mr Hargreaves for it—because what is important to highlight is some of the debates on response times for our Ambulance Service. I saw the very unfair headline in the Canberra Times when the ROGS data came out which suggested that ambos ambled. I think that was the headline in the Canberra Times. I reject that. Our ambos are hardworking. Our ambos are there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and they do a very important job for the Canberra community.
The way that we measure response times in the ACT is best practice, and only the ACT, Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia measure response times from the first key stroke. That is pretty much straight after the triple zero call is received in the communications centre. Compare this with what happens in some of the large jurisdictions like New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, where they only measure response times from the time the call is transferred to dispatch, equally, even
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