Page 4874 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011

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communications call centre, we have got a modern and up-to-date workshop—in fact one of the best workshop facilities in the city—and we have got a modern and up-to-date logistical support centre that is serving the ESA very well and delivering a very effective support to our emergency services in the field.

MR SESELJA: Supplementary.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Seselja.

MR SESELJA: Minister, what changes have had to be made to the operational requirements of the ESA to function effectively from the site at Fairbairn?

MR CORBELL: A range of relatively minor changes were implemented in ESA operations to ensure that there was no compromising of response times. The two key changes were these. There was the distribution and the decentralisation of secure medicines storage from the ESA headquarters to individual ESA ambulance stations to ensure that ambulances did not have to return to headquarters to replenish secure medication stores, and that has been achieved at a relatively minor cost to ensure that there is no compromising of response times. The other changes related, similarly, to storage requirements and disbursement of equipment from the ESA headquarters for the ACT Fire Brigade. Similar measures have been put in place to those that are in place for the ambulance.

All of these costs are already on the public record. They were appropriated and agreed to by this Assembly in previous budgets and they have been operational now for a number of years.

MS LE COUTEUR: A supplementary.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, Ms Le Couteur.

MS LE COUTEUR: Minister, as of today, can large ESA vehicles be driven inside the workshop or are the doors to the building still too narrow and the ceiling too low?

MR CORBELL: Ms Le Couteur is referring to the assessment of the old building that was originally identified as a building potentially for workshops. That building was completely inadequate. That building is not used by the ESA for its workshop facility. The ESA has a purpose-built workshop facility—one of the best large vehicle workshops in the city—and it is able to accommodate all vehicles in the ESA fleet.

Mayor of Nara—visit

DR BOURKE: Chief Minister, can you advise the Assembly about the recent visit by the Mayor of Nara?

MS GALLAGHER: I thank Dr Bourke for the question. It was a great pleasure to meet with the Mayor of Nara, Mr Gen Nakagawa, during his visit to Canberra last weekend. Perhaps having the Mayor of Nara in the ACT was overshadowed somewhat by the presence of Her Majesty the Queen visiting the ACT as well.


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