Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority
Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:01): My question is to the Minister for Emergency Services. Minister, with all the problems known and highlighted in the past two years with calls for ambulances not being answered while people are dying, why are less than half of the new positions you announced some weeks ago being allocated to ambulance call taking and dispatch?
The PRESIDENT: What was the question?
Ms CROZIER: Why are less than half of the new positions you announced some weeks ago being allocated to ambulance call taking and dispatch?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:02): Ms Crozier, I think a lot of people in the house have got a bit used to hearing about how ESTA works. It is a complex workplace. It requires a lot of personnel. If you are a call taker, you need support from a supervisor, you need support from somebody that can ensure that your mental health and wellbeing is in check and you need people to do the rosters. You need people to do a range of things at ESTA to make sure that it can function appropriately, so we are ensuring that we are providing the resources to ESTA to ensure that they can recruit more and more call takers, but that cannot be viewed in isolation. The system will not work if you only have people to answer the phones. You need the RefCom team to allocate the dispatch of the ambulances. You need all of the other personnel—the experts, the people that have had the training—to support the system so that it can work as well as it possibly can to ensure that Victorians have confidence in a really important system. We have recruited 43 new positions. I am pleased to report in relation to the ambulance call-taking training scheme that it is well and truly booked until June, and we continue to recruit more and more people and encourage people to consider a fantastic opportunity to take up a job at ESTA.
Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (12:03): Minister, thank you for that response. You spoke about what the government is doing about resourcing ESTA now, but we have not had that over the last two years, and sadly Victorians have died. Minister, what is the breakdown of the 122 new positions—how many will be ambulance call takers, how many will be ambulance dispatchers, how many will be allocated to the police and fire roles—and will you commit to releasing this information fully and publicly?
Ms SYMES (Northern Victoria—Leader of the Government, Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:03): Ms Crozier, you have asked me about the 120 FTE that I have recently announced through $115 million of funding, and I can confirm that 55 will be call takers and dispatch, 12 team leaders, 21 trainers, 21 support staff and 10 managers and supervisors. This is on top of the additional 43 FTE that were funded in the 2021–22 budget and $27.5 million in October, which provided additional support to staff.
Ms Crozier: On a point of order, President, I thank the minister for that response, but my question was more specific around ambulance, police and fire roles, not just the roles themselves.
The PRESIDENT: I cannot direct the minister on how to answer.