Page 882 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 18 March 2015
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to legal liability but also responds effectively to the concerns and recommendations that have been raised. The plan that the government has just released this afternoon seems to set that out quite clearly.
The document, Enhancing Professionalism—A Blueprint for Change, synthesises several pieces of work: the 2010 Lennox review, a literature review which looks at issues across the ambulance industry more broadly than the ACT, and the report that has been the focus of this debate, the O2C Solutions report which reviews current organisational behaviours. As the blueprint report says in its executive summary, it provides the blueprint and drivers for organisational change, and this seems a good approach to me.
The blueprint document covers the findings of the reports in 11 categories, as well as eight recommendations. These encompass the recommendations from the O2C report. It is appropriate, I think, to include the findings and recommendations here but not to include the specific identifying information. If there is a finding, for example, that bullying is a problem, that is sufficient without needing to include a quote from a particular person that might identify them and a person they accuse of bullying.
I will put on the record my strong desire that this blueprint report and its recommendations are taken very seriously and that the government takes appropriate action in response. I am confident that Minister Burch will be doing that. She has reflected that already in her comments and her proposed amendment to the motion. I note that Minister Burch has an amendment that she intends to move today. I have indicated that I will be happy to give Minister Burch leave to take the floor again in a short time, once I have completed my remarks, so that she can move her amendment at that time. It is quite clear that she has circulated that amendment and I think it would be appropriate to come back and move through that procedural point in a moment.
It is true that there are problems in the Ambulance Service that need attention and need to improve. I think that has been made very clear today. I reflect on the comments that Mr Smyth made about the need for transparency on this. Anybody who has read today’s paper, who listened to the Emergency Services Commissioner on radio this morning and who listened to Minister Burch on radio this morning will have had it made perfectly clear to them that there is an acknowledgement of the problems within the ACT Ambulance Service. Nobody, I think, is seeking to hide that. To me, that is the important thing here. It is important that the problems are in context. That is a broader question. To focus only on the negatives or to inflate them is potentially to do a disservice to ACTAS, unnecessarily undermine public faith in the Ambulance Service and potentially make the problems harder to deal with.
Some context is provided by the literature review. To quote the blueprint document, the comprehensive literature review “makes clear that the ambulance industry as a whole is still in a period of transition to professional recognition and ACTAS has similar characteristics to many other ambulance services both nationally and internationally”.
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