Thursday, 10 March 2022

Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (10:19): Since October over a dozen Victorians have tragically and sadly died due to a failure in ESTA’s response. After the thunderstorm asthma event in 2016 the inspector-general for emergency management undertook a significant review, and in his final report made recommendations including:

surge capacity strategies for emergency response

sharing of operational communication and information

provision of public information, warnings and health advice

effectiveness of Triple Zero (000) and ambulance response.

So this issue is not new. Victorians were told by the Victorian government, by Daniel Andrews, that we needed to go into lockdown time and time again to prepare Victoria’s health system in response to COVID-19. Yet the government has failed to prepare one very vital element of our health response, and that is 000. They have had years of warnings, years of time to get preparations in place. This week we saw a response by the Minister for Emergency Services of some funding, which will not be undertaken immediately to solve this problem. This is years of neglect and incompetence that has tragically led to the deaths of too many Victorians.