Tuesday, 14 November 2023

Emergency services workers

Paul EDBROOKE (Frankston) (13:10): I too welcome Hannah. You should come by for a coffee sometime and meet my friend the member for Dunkley Peta Murphy. She is a gem.

On 20 October I had the unfortunate experience of riding a plane into the ground. It is not something I recommend for anyone, but I just wanted to get up today to thank the emergency services on scene. It was quite the thing for 17 people to walk out of a smashed-up plane, which lost power after take-off, let alone having I think the best of the best there, with CFA, FRV, Victoria Police, ambos and SES. They even brought out some tools I do not reckon I saw in my career. But they were amazing, they were professional and they had quite a bit to deal with on scene.

But it did not stop there. A couple of days later I ended up at an incident where, again, our ambos and police turned up. I would like to acknowledge the security at Karingal shopping centre – they were amazing – but also our fantastic ambos, who just arrived so quickly. The police came and helped out too. The professionalism displayed by these people cannot go unnoticed. I know we talk about a lot of things in this house sometimes, but when you have a personal connection in an incident you certainly want to make sure that people who helped you out at the time are acknowledged. Thank you. And I thank them from everybody at Skydive Australia from the bottom of my heart.