Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority
Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): My question is to the Minister for Ambulance Services. In the last six months 12 Victorians have died waiting for ambulance dispatch to deliver an ambulance, one of them being a nine-month-old boy. What advice has the government received as to how many other tragic deaths over the past two years have been as a result of an inability for ambulance dispatch to be able to respond to these life-and-death telephone calls?
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:08): Can I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. The system whereby calls to 000 come through ESTA, the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, and then depending on how they get allocated from there to the relevant emergency service, in this case the ambulance service, has been the subject of significant and right public inquiries and reviews in recent times. The most recent iterations of those that we have seen in recent days are simply not acceptable, and I think all Victorians would accept that when it comes to the position of how those most recent examples point to the instances of breakdown in that system, that reform has to happen and the change has to happen. That is why I was particularly pleased to see yesterday the Minister for Emergency Services deliver a record package of over $115.9 million of new funding to deliver substantial new and revised systems in ESTA to deal with precisely the issues that the honourable Leader of the Opposition raised.
In addition to that is the work being done by former Chief Commissioner of Police, Graham Ashton, in assisting ESTA and all the emergency services organisations that they deal with—Ambulance Victoria, Fire Rescue Victoria, the CFA, the SES and a range of others. How all those first-responder, critical, time-sensitive matters get dealt with is a matter that is under active consideration by Graham Ashton. In addition again, the inspector-general for emergency management, a fine public servant, is well down the path of his particular aspect of how the system reviews on precisely the issues that the honourable Leader of the Opposition touches on.
This is a government that knows there are issues that have to be dealt with in this space. I think the efforts of the Minister for Emergency Services in terms of yesterday’s new package in addition to the already 43 new call takers that she has funded through those arrangements late last year will start to see impact in this critical area. That is why it is so important that the issues that the honourable Leader of the Opposition touched on have been recognised and taken up by this government. I look forward to that investment in ESTA, in our emergency services first responders who have dealt with an extraordinary workload increase over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, achieving the goals that I think all Victorians can come together and support.
Mr GUY (Bulleen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:11): Noting again my substantive question being over the tragic death numbers that may have occurred over the last two years, I would like to supplementarily ask when the government will deliver to Victorians the five-second mandated call answer target for the ambulance dispatch system.
Mr FOLEY (Albert Park—Minister for Health, Minister for Ambulance Services, Minister for Equality) (14:12): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. Indeed it was this government that particularly funded the record amounts of funding after the war with our paramedics was ended in 2014 and saw the funding particularly delivered by the honourable member for Altona in her stint as health minister that saw the highest level of performance of ESTA and Ambulance Victoria in its history in the period immediately before the global pandemic. I look forward to those extraordinary levels of demand and workforce pressure that ESTA and the entire first-responder community has been subject to now that we are in a more stable but far from ended environment through this record amount of funding that the honourable Minister for Emergency Services delivered to fix this precise issue.