Page 2616 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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In June this year the government announced reforms to the operations of the comm cen. That announcement did not come overnight or out of the blue. It was the result of a number of years of consultation with staff, volunteers, unions and other stakeholders and it included feedback from groups, such as the rural fire brigade captains group, who supported reforms to the comm cen because it would allow for better integration between the comm cen and incident management teams during bushfires.
Our announcement signals the government’s intention for a one communication centre model where, regardless of whether the emergency is a medical one, a bushfire, a house fire, a motor vehicle accident, a storm or another emergency, a call-taker in the comm cen will have the ability to action the call. The reforms will enhance the ESA’s ability to scale up its capacity, particularly during major emergencies, and it means we will not be taking extra firefighters away from the front line where they are needed most.
The one comm cen model will also allow the ESA to explore options to better use technology to provide better services to our community. This includes integrating systems to facilitate the provision of information between emergency services and the public with the faster release of media alerts and updates, as well as the update of relevant websites. The announcement will also boost front-line firefighting capacity across the ACT. It will mean more firefighters available to respond to incidents and to continue important prevention initiatives to keep our community safe.
The latest reforms to the ESA comm cen continue the transition to a model that commenced in 2010 when our Ambulance Service moved to its highly effective call-taker dispatch system. This allowed more paramedics to get back on the road, to get back into ambulances, to treat patients out in the community. We are now looking at how this can be applied in relation to the firefighting services, and the aim is to have changes implemented from 1 July 2017.
Staff morale is, of course, important in any workplace and the ESA, through its strategic reform agenda and associated strategies, such as the blueprint for change and our women in emergency services strategy, has a number of key actions and measures already publicly identified. Madam Deputy Speaker, you as my predecessor in this portfolio launched the blueprint for change in March last year. The blueprint provides the framework for ACTAS staff to address workforce concerns around trust, conflict resolution and leadership, and its broad objective is to support and foster a culture of professionalism throughout the ACTAS workforce.
Equally, our focus in the women in emergency services strategy is to promote the greater representation of women in the rank and file of our emergency services and to provide a pathway for our services to better reflect the community they serve by increasing the service’s gender diversity. The most recent ACT Fire and Rescue firefighter recruitment process specifically targeted women as part of this strategy. As a result, we saw that 25 per cent of successful applicants in the Fire and Rescue recruit college for June this year were women. A key focus of the women in emergency services strategy is to ensure, at least in the future, that at least 50 per cent of places are obtained by women.
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