Page 4276 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 27 November 2013
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ambulance support to the west Belconnen area, with the new Charnwood or west Belconnen fire and rescue and ambulance station, delivered on time, under budget and for the first time making sure west Belconnen is serviced by the intensive care paramedic support that it needs as a growing area.
We have delivered funding for the construction of the new south Tuggeranong fire and rescue facility. This facility, for the first time, will make sure there is effective fire cover for the Lanyon valley. This is a very important shift in the deployment of our fire and rescue personnel. It has been funded in this year’s budget, DA approval has been granted and it has gone to tender. That project is going to kick off in the coming months, and it is going to be a welcome facility, I know, for everybody who lives in the south Tuggeranong area.
There are other important aspects to the station relocation program also underway. We have the proposals for the development of the new fire and rescue and ambulance station at Aranda. That project is expected to proceed to its DA assessment stage in the coming months. We have stage 2 of station relocation also underway, with due diligence and assessment right now occurring for station relocation in places like Pialligo, Fairbairn, in the city, Fyshwick and a range of other locations. These are all indicators of a government committed to the delivery of improved front-line operational response capability for our emergency services, and delivered under the administrative arrangements that have now been in place for well over half a decade.
The government has invested significantly in fleet upgrade as well. We have seen major fleet upgrade activities occurring right across the ESA—new ambulances, and extra ambulances, on the street, a refresh of all of the pumpers across ACT Fire and Rescue, an upgrading of significant amounts of tankers within the Rural Fire Service, as well as new light units and a range of other capabilities. We have seen upgrades and new equipment for the State Emergency Service—new vehicles and new flood management equipment. For the ACT Rural Fire Service, we have also seen significant investments in a range of other capabilities.
The government has delivered major new projects. The ESA headquarters at Fairbairn is now delivering a capable, state-of-the-art, modern emergency services headquarters function. The government has invested significantly in a new training facility at Hume. The ESA training centre is now regarded as one of the best combined training facilities for emergency services in the country. It replaces the outdated, old and antiquated fire and rescue training facilities in Lathlain Street in Belconnen, and for the first time opens up our training capabilities to our other services, particularly our volunteer services, so that Rural Fire Service volunteers, community fire unit volunteers and SES volunteers can all take advantage of the state-of-the-art training facilities we have at Hume. These are investments that this government has made, and which are paying dividends in terms of the capabilities, training and ability to respond that our emergency services now have.
Of course, the government has also invested in other important pieces of infrastructure. The new RFS helicopter base, again at Hume, for the first time gives us a dedicated capability for that critical element of firefighting response in the summer months, aerial firefighting capabilities, a dedicated heli-base with all the facilities needed to run a large-scale incident with multiple aerial appliances.
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