Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Grievance debate

Ambulance services

Mr BATTIN (Gembrook) (16:28): On 27 October at just 14 years old Alisha Hussein looks into her mother’s eyes and says, ‘I’m not going to make it’, and she was right. Alisha died that day. Prior to these words from a terrified young girl to her mother, Jasmin, the story was all too common here in Victoria. I think it is essential that the words from the call are recorded in this place to ensure that the focus of any government in the future is about protecting lives, saving lives and delivering at minimum the services that can make a difference.

Operator: Emergency, police, fire or ambulance?

Jasmin: Ambulance.

Operator: That’s ambulance ringing out now. Please wait.

Jasmin: Thank you. She’s going blue.

Operator: I’ll see how long it’s going to take.

You can hear other family members in the background. Jasmin was put on hold by the Telstra operator. May I add here that our thoughts are with the operators from Telstra who are not at fault but simply trying to get an answer in Victoria. They had to listen to the heartbreaking conversation as it happened.

Operator: (off hold) Ambulance still ringing.

Jasmin: I’m going to maybe … drive her. Is it going to be quicker?

Operator: I would have no way of predicting that for you, I’m sorry.

Jasmin: She’s not going to probably make it.

Two minutes later:

Operator: Still connecting.

Jasmin: She’s dying.

Five minutes later:

Jasmin: I’m not even getting a pulse.

Operator: Still connecting to ambulance.

Ten minutes later:

Operator: Ambulance still ringing out.

Fifteen minutes: Jasmin finally hears the voice of an ambulance call taker, as they walked into hospital. Jasmin told the operator:

She is not breathing properly, and she is not going to make it.

Jasmin made the decision to drive to her to hospital, and you can hear that in the recording—the recording that should live with every person here forever:

Jasmin: Breathe, Alisha. Alisha breathe.

This is because people here in Victoria are waiting minutes and not the 5 seconds that is required when people call 000. Jasmin believes that if the call was answered in 5 minutes or maybe even 10 Alisha would be alive. Thirty-three people have lost their lives. Thirty-three families will still be feeling the pain of knowing that something could have been done that would have impacted the outcome, and that would be very difficult for each of those families to live with.

The government that has overseen this showed a lack of empathy and compassion to the families. Instead of reaching out to them to offer them support when the inspector-general for emergency management report was released and offering additional care, the Premier, the Minister for Emergency Services and their teams reached for the phone to call the media team to ensure the PR was right and the timing would limit the damage to the Labor Party. This report was released as over 90 000 people made their way to the biggest AFL final in Victoria in three years. It was a Saturday. I imagine the thinking from the Premier and his team was that there would be limited staff on the newsdesk, most likely not those all over the detail, and they could release and ride the wave of footy finals over that weekend with barely a headline in the news—wrong, so very wrong. The media rightfully called out this disgraceful behaviour, and on behalf of the families and every person in the state, who deserve the truth, I will say it again: this decision to attempt to hide the truth of 33 deaths in this state makes me sick. It was an absolute disgrace.

The government then continued to try to say that the issues with 000 are not their fault but the fault of COVID. They are more interested in PR, in stunts and in spin to cover up the fact of the failings. You only need to read report after report in the Herald Sun, including while this was happening. The government opted to do a review using Graham Ashton, and when that review was put forward and the details started to come out, those that were having input into that report were hand-picked by the senior management of ESTA—hand-picked. What did that do? It covered the truth. In the Herald Sun on 16 March:

Concerns were raised about a major review into the operator of Victoria’s triple-0 service after staff were hand-picked for consultations.

…

A government spokeswoman confirmed ESTA managers were asked to nominate staff …

…

On Monday it was revealed Deputy Premier James Merlino—a former emergency services minister—was warned about serious staff shortages in ESTA in 2016.

Yet they were hand-picking staff for a report to try to make sure it would favour the government rather than reveal the truth to 33 families. The government knew about the problems. They knew about the issues in relation to funding. On 15 March in the Age there was a report about the 000 alarm raised before 12 deaths:

Victoria’s Deputy Premier, James Merlino, was warned in 2016 about serious staff shortages at the state’s triple-zero call agency, more than five years before an explosion of call delays was linked to the deaths of 12 people.

The Age has obtained a letter to Mr Merlino dated December 2016 in which unions told the then emergency services minister that call-takers at the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA) were so overworked they were unable to take proper breaks or access leave and were expected to work overtime, and that some were suffering from stress and mental health issues.

In a separate development, experienced emergency call-takers for ESTA said they were reporting call wait times of more than a minute dating to at least mid-2019—

pre COVID—

… well before the pandemic, and said numerous warnings were not acted on.

…

Unions representing paramedics, firefighters and emergency call-takers claimed ESTA had promised 48 new full-time-equivalent positions during enterprise bargaining … in 2015, but the pledge for the new operational roles was later withdrawn because the money was no longer available.

So the government cut the funds.

“Unfortunately, in what is a bizarre set of circumstances, at our most recent ESTA consultative committee meeting Tuesday 13 December 2016 ESTA made admissions to the unions that not only were they no longer employing the 48 additional FTE positions promised but that they ‘no longer had the funding’ …

This email was also sent to the Premier in 2016. Further:

Two experienced call-takers said the issue of understaffing had been regularly raised with ESTA management by workers in forums over many years and “regularly dismissed”. One of the workers, who could not be identified because they still work at ESTA, said they had kept records of call-answering delays around May 2019, including waits of more than two minutes to reach ambulance operators and four minutes to reach police.

“At that point we said, ‘You’re going to kill someone. This is not acceptable.’ To blame COVID-19 is disgraceful …

That was call takers calling out the government for the disgraceful behaviour of trying to blame COVID for their failures in the 000 system. I know we speak a lot about the 000 crisis and ambulances, but we cannot forget, as is in the Sunday Age of 4 September:

The deaths of four children in a house fire in Werribee have been linked to the crisis that engulfed Victoria’s triple-zero call agency, the true scale of which has been revealed in a damning report highlighting 33 deaths.

…

One person waited more than 76 minutes for their call to be answered …

…

While the report does not identify where the fire occurred or the number of fatalities, The Sunday Age has confirmed that it is the Werribee fire that killed four siblings, aged 1 to 10, in November …

The initial triple-zero call to police was subject to several delays caused by a backlog of calls for ESTA ambulance dispatchers in Victoria. The caller was initially unable to get through to the Telstra service charged with directing every Australian triple-zero call to either police, fire or ambulance because too many of the operators were on hold trying to connect calls for Victorian ambulances.

They waited 22 seconds listening to a pre-recorded message … of the delays, then waited another minute for the call to be answered and dispatched …

Following that, it took another 79 seconds before an operator at ESTA was available to answer …

For those that understand fires, in a current, modern house, if a fire is ignited, within 4 minutes—in about the time that I have got left in this speech—that room where the ignition point started would probably be destroyed. That is how long it took for that call to eventually get through. Then you add on that it takes 10 minutes for the fire department to get there; that is enough for a house to go. Four children died in that fire, and the government’s interest was PR and trying to hide this report so they did not have to face the damning questions.

There was ‘Doubts cast on Dan’s excuse in ambulance row’, where Victoria’s inspector-general for emergency management poured cold water over findings that they did not need to release it on that Saturday. When the Premier came out stating that it was still being worked on, Mr Pearce said there was one digit that had to be changed—simply one digit. We know this is a big issue. We know this has been a major concern for all Victorians, and that is why we are very proud on this side that we will commit to fixing the 000 crisis. We will make sure that there is a proper and effective backup system at 000 so we never return to pen and paper, which happened during COVID. When the system failed, pen and paper were being used for ambulance call takers—not good enough. We will then ensure that the system available with the dispatch system is upgraded so it is a modern system. The current government have stopped and withdrawn the funding for that upgrade at the moment. They have withdrawn that from 000 at the same time there is a crisis in this state. How could a government in their right mind withdraw the funding to upgrade the system after every report that has come out? It is bewildering.

There is another major issue that was identified in this report: only 16 per cent of call takers are cross-trained. They work in silos. This is not the fault of call takers; this is the fault of policy by a government that does not have the courage to go in there and say, ‘We need to invest in training these staff so they are in the best position to take calls within the 5 seconds required’, and we will train up to 50 per cent so they can move where the surge is at the time. Whether it is a Black Saturday event, thunderstorm asthma, a Bourke Street tragedy—wherever those call takers are needed, we will make sure they are trained and they can move there.

As part of that $125 million we will ensure that we have recurrent funding for 000, because report after report after report has said that is one of the major issues. Even this week Stephen Leane has come out and said that whilst the funding is okay at the moment, that is exactly where the problem lies. You cannot continue to have a system where the CEO is coming out and saying, ‘The funding is okay at the moment’. How does the government, how does ESTA, plan for surge through our state?

As we close this Parliament and we go to an election, Victorians will have a clear choice when it comes to 000: a government that ignored reports in 2015, a government that ignored reports in 2016, a government that ignored a call for $1 million extra in 2020, a government that cut call-taking staff in 2021, a government that promised 48 new staff then withdrew the funding, a government that withdrew the funding to upgrade the computer-assisted dispatch system to bring it into the 21st century; or you can elect the Liberal-Nationals to go into government to deliver on our commitments and ensure that we treat ESTA 000 as a genuine emergency service here in Victoria and that we work with every call taker to get the advice and information from them directly—not hand-picked ones, we will meet with the ones that are on the ground taking those calls and feeling the pressure and the stress. We will deliver the world-class 000 system that Victoria deserves. Only Victoria had an average of above 100 seconds during the full COVID period. Only Victoria cut staff. Only Victoria had 33 people die because of failings at 000. Every other state managed to cope. There is only one thing that Victoria has that those other states do not, and that is an Andrews-led Labor government, and we need to change at this election.