Wednesday, 21 September 2022

Motions

Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority

Mr DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan—Leader of the Opposition) (11:03): I move:

That:

(1) this house notes that:

(a) the inspector-general for emergency management’s report on the performance and serious failings of the 000 service conducted by the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA), titled Review of Victoria’s Emergency Ambulance Call Answer Performance, was released publicly on Saturday, 3 September 2022, even though it was available to the government earlier;

(b) up to 33 deaths are linked to the failings of the ESTA call-taking system during the recent crisis in 000 call taking and these incidents, as well as others, could have been prevented had timely action been taken by the Andrews Labor government;

(c) the Andrews Labor government ignored warnings from 2015 and 2016 that pointed to clear failings in the ESTA 000 call service and clearly identified risks to the ability of ESTA to manage periods of increased service call demand, including a need for a secure and reliable funding base;

(d) the Minister for Emergency Services, the Honourable Jaclyn Symes MLC, failed to act immediately upon becoming aware of the failings of the ESTA service to ensure it had an immediate injection of sufficient funding and other necessary support to enable it to adequately deliver life-saving services; and

(2) the house has consequently lost confidence in the Minister for Emergency Services.

This is a serious motion, and it relates directly to a very serious matter that the community has faced. The review from the inspector-general for emergency management is a significant piece of work and certainly adds to our understanding, but the government has known for a long time that there is a failing ESTA service. They have known that there has not been the capacity. There were clear indications that the earlier board was aware of the problems. The earlier board, in 2015 and 2016, did understand that there were serious issues. They did apply to the government for increased funding. The issues of secure and ongoing funding have not been addressed until very recently by this government, and the government had plenty of warning. It is clear from what has been said by the IGEM that indeed the government’s refusal to deal with this matter did mean that there was not the surge capacity, did mean that investments that should have been made were not made by the government and did mean that when the difficulties came forward through COVID—and it is around the country that this happened—the government had not put in place a service that could cope with that surge in activity.

The government has tried to say, ‘Oh, well, it’s all COVID’, but actually surges in activity were foreseeable. We know from the thunderstorm asthma incident that the government was aware that surges could occur, and advice and warnings were given to government at that time. The failure to heed those issues and failure to put in place a proper funding system—a secure funding system, an adequate funding system—and the technology that is required and the personnel that are required is a sign of failure by this government. It is a serious failure, and it almost certainly has resulted in so many deaths. I accept that the 33 terrible incidents that are pointed to in the IGEM report and that have been discussed widely elsewhere—and a number of cases have been referred to directly in the press across a period—are matters for the coroner to make ultimate determination on. But it is clear that there is a significant pattern here, and that significant pattern has not been addressed by the government. The government ought to have taken proper action and the government ought to have put in place a proper funding system, and the truth is of course that they have not.

We have heard question after question after question in this chamber where the minister has not been fully forthcoming. The minister has tried to cover her tracks and the government’s tracks on these matters, and the minister has not fully accepted responsibility for what has gone on here. It is true that the minister is a relatively recent minister to this portfolio. It is true that she was not directly responsible for the failings back in 2015 and 2016 and onwards. But it is also true that she did not act swiftly enough when the warnings came through. From the minutes of the ESTA board—and we have certainly been through the period from July 2020 all the way through until 28 April this year, so it is a long period of minutes that we have closely examined—it is clear that the minister was receiving reports. Both this minister and the former minister were receiving regular reports from ESTA, and ESTA was again and again pointing to the government and saying, ‘Look, we need that financial support’. It is clear that the expenditure review committee did knock back budget bids. It is clear that the expenditure review committee did not provide the secure funding that was needed. The government is responsible for those decisions. Ultimately the minister in the Westminster system is responsible and has got to carry the can for the failings of the system.

It is true that there are other government ministers that have been involved here, not least historically, but certainly senior government ministers who made funding decisions around ESTA have got to bear some responsibility as well. But the fact is that Minister Symes is the minister responsible for ESTA currently, and it is clear even now that there are significant problems in ESTA and that the government has not dealt with all of these issues yet. Still reports come to the opposition, and more broadly, about the issues. We have made the point publicly about the terrible outcomes that have occurred for people. The length of time is just frightening on some of these calls. Look, I could go on at length through the IGEM report, but I am not going to because many people have read it. It says:

The current benchmark for ESTA’s speed of call answer for emergency ambulance is that within a calendar month, ESTA answers 90 per cent of such calls within five seconds.

We have heard again and again and again about the failure to meet that benchmark. And further:

Despite … careful planning and best endeavours ESTA’s call answer speed performance for emergency ambulance … has fallen below community and government expectations and performance benchmarks …

It talks about how:

This review identifies significant declines in ESTA’s emergency ambulance call answer times, commencing in December 2020, with ambulance call activity increasing beyond historical highs, and emergency calls queuing for completely unacceptable lengths of time—10 minutes, 15 minutes, and longer.

This I think is important to get on the record. I urge people: if they have not read the IGEM’s report, they should. He said:

I identified 40 potential adverse events during the period 1 December 2020 and 31 May 2022 … associated with call answer delays, agency command and control decisions, and/or ambulance resourcing issues. Tragically, 33 of these patients did not survive their emergencies.

Those families, those people, deserve proper answers. They deserve openness and they deserve much more transparency. The government hid this report for a period. Why did they do that? The government has been very reluctant to be transparent on these matters. He goes on to say:

ESTA missed opportunities to recruit and deploy additional emergency ambulance call-takers during the pandemic, particularly in 2020. This was for several reasons, one of which is related to the existing funding model to which ESTA is subject.

Another reason for shortfalls in call-takers related to the need to furlough …

That is entirely predictable in a pandemic. Every state confronted this, but the deterioration in call performance was not as severe in any other state as it was in Victoria. Victoria again is the standout as the failure state, the state that is incompetent in running these matters. It is not Victoria; it is actually the Victorian government that is responsible and the minister who is ultimately responsible. The report says:

Despite liaison with counterparts interstate and overseas, and extensive planning, ESTA’s governance, existing links within the Victorian emergency management sector, and funding model revealed shortcomings in its ability to rapidly scale-up its response.

The warnings were there in 2015. The warnings were there in 2016. The warnings and the requests from ESTA for a secure funding model, for additional funding, for upgrades and for additional staff were all there again and again. The set of minutes is replete. You can actually feel the tension. You can actually feel the concern of people as the board and the people at ESTA were in vain calling for additional resources. There is a desperation in those minutes, and that is not something I say often about a set of minutes from an authority. You can actually feel the tension. You can feel the fact that they know they need that funding, and they are not getting it. They are not getting the security. They cannot do the investments they need to do, and they know that it puts the organisation at huge risk and consequently puts the public at huge risk—people at risk, families at risk.

Call takers are trying to do their best, but when the calls come from members of the public with a sick family member the support is not there. They are not able to get through, the outcome is not satisfactory. I say the government has got to actually make sure that this is dealt with. We have actually got to have a system where this is dealt with.

The issue of hang-ups is again replete through that report. The minister yesterday would not answer the question: how many hang-ups were recorded in the period to 30 June for the year, and how many hang-ups were recorded for four financial years? I think we are entitled to know these sorts of basic figures, and I think the government’s failure to provide those is a cover-up and is unacceptable. I think the minister has to answer for these points. So this motion is actually a very difficult motion and a very important motion. It lays out in its first part the facts of the report. It lays out the 33 deaths that the IGEM report identifies. It makes the point that in 2015 and 2016 the service issues were identified. The government knew, and it failed to act. That is culpability by this government. It is a culpable government. It is a government that is responsible for these bad outcomes. It is a government that through its failure to act, despite warnings, has exposed families and members of the public here to enormous risk. People, frankly, have died because of the government’s failure to manage this and failure to take the actions that were required at an early point.

The minister did not act quickly enough when she became aware of these matters. Again, the minutes are quite clear about the time cycles, the funding requests and the requests for urgent increases in staff and that these were not met quickly enough. Then as the pandemic hit, as it did in every state, in every area of the country and elsewhere around the world, those other states, New South Wales in particular, managed it more effectively than Victoria. The failure here is due to the long-term failure but also the failure to act quickly in the early periods of the pandemic and beyond. I am still not confident that the government has found a solution on this, and I think the minister actually should do the honourable thing and step aside. What she has done here is not manage this process properly.

I accept that the government has now put additional money in—and we have identified holes in that money; my colleagues will have more to say about that. But we accept that the minister has put more money in now belatedly, after the horse has bolted, as it were, and after the terrible and tragic incidents have occurred. So, yes, new money has gone in, but there are holes in that program. We have identified those and indicated that we will deal with those if elected in November.

But the fact is that at this point the government has not provided satisfactory explanations for its failures. It has not been honest; it has tried to cover up these reports—and the government could have tabled this. The minutes make it clear that the board expected this report to be provided in June. That is what the minutes show. So I say the government has not been transparent, has not been honest and has not dealt with what is a very, very serious community situation. I urge the chamber to support the motion.

Ms SHING (Eastern Victoria—Minister for Water, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Equality) (11:17): This is a motion that goes to the heart of some exceptionally tragic and traumatic subject matter, and I want to begin my contribution by noting the very, very human element of the subject matter we are dealing with today. This is something which Minister Symes, the Minister for Health, the Minister for Police and indeed the Premier have been very, very clear about—that nobody is walking away from the impact of the pandemic and the consequences of a global health crisis that pushed all of our systems to their limits.

To that end I want to echo the condolences that colleagues of mine have made and indeed that people have made across the Parliament at the loss and the grief that people are feeling and continue to feel following the worst of the pandemic and the waves that we have experienced. I also want to place the context for these events within the circumstances of the pandemic and the fact that comparing Victoria with other states is a difficult exercise, as much as anything because here in Victoria we had a range of circumstances that necessitated and indeed demanded an appropriate response, which limited certain opportunities, freedoms and I suppose engagements for people within a range of different contexts. This also necessitated a range of frameworks for isolation, for restrictions and indeed for furloughing. That was a large contributing factor to the challenges within ESTA and its workforce availability during the pandemic.

But when I turn my mind to the motion itself, I want to really indicate the importance of being very careful in the course of this particular debate on Mr Davis’s motion. In the first instance, the inspector-general for emergency management (IGEM), Tony Pearce, is not empowered—and he has confirmed in his report that he is not empowered—to investigate or indeed to make any findings or determinations relating to the cause of death of the 33 people who Mr Davis has identified. When we talk about the loss of life it is vital that the coroner is in a position to undertake this work by reference to that particular position and indeed in a position to do so without the input of the Parliament or indeed the executive. The judicial arm of government needs to be able to reach into these matters and to make decisions about them which are free from any political interference.

When I turn my mind to the motion itself, I note that there have been a range of matters contemplated in the face of the global pandemic that have necessitated additional funding and that have necessitated additional workforce development and, as Mr Davis points out, additional funding. In the first instance, the $27.5 million was announced by the Minister for Emergency Services within weeks of the advice being returned from the IGEM, on top of that $46 million package, including those 43 full-time equivalent staff which were facilitated within the 2021 budget. There was further funding provided in March, and that then was followed with a $333 million package in the 2022–23 budget to employ 400 new staff.

Following on from a system—one of many systems—under extraordinary pressure, as so many systems were and have been in the course of the pandemic, the recovery of target times is something which is important to note. The extraordinary work of ESTA call takers is not ever to be underestimated. The cost involved in being a call taker for ESTA for those workers is often enormous. The Minister for Emergency Services has detailed in this house a number of times in response to questions from those opposite the experiences that she has witnessed when sitting in on call-taking environments, and I note that in that regard the work of this particular workforce is a continuing priority for this government.

When we look at the recovery in terms of targets and meeting targets, the target of 90 per cent has actually been exceeded for August—that is now 92.8 per cent. And whilst it does not fix what has happened, we are in a position now to build upon that work and to continue those improvements over time. The Inspector-General for Emergency Management has also noted in his report that his findings and recommendations are framed with the benefit of hindsight. The benefit of hindsight is something which should guide us and indeed should guide everyone in this Parliament to continuous improvement. This is something which actually goes back a number of decades, following the sale of emergency services management processes to Intergraph and indeed the inquiry and commission by Lex Lasry into the failures of that system as it existed then. There have been so many discussions over so many decades involving criticism of the funding models but also involving the way in which systems like this have been set up and supported over time. ESTA has sought and indeed received funding commensurate with its requests in the past. We now have a funding envelope which stands to recognise the ongoing needs of ESTA and of emergency management response.

I pick up on one of Mr Davis’s points made earlier about thunderstorm asthma being a salutary reminder of the system, to paraphrase him, ‘not being suitably equipped’. Thunderstorm asthma was an event which lasted a number of hours. That is not to say that it was not an exceptional strain on the system, but to compare that with the pandemic, an environment of extraordinary pressure over more than 12 months, is to ignore the need to be refined and to commit to continuous improvement of our system in a way that acknowledges that where we have been in recent years is a very far cry from where we thought we would ever be—that in fact the report into thunderstorm asthma did not identify any need for a changed funding model or indeed for additional funding, that yes, we have work to do and yes, we need to lean into that improvement but that significant steps have been taken and are being taken to address these issues.

I commend Minister Symes. Again, as Mr Davis has indicated, in the relatively short period of time that she has had this portfolio she has worked really assiduously to deliver funding that goes directly to addressing the issues that those opposite have talked about and have raised on numerous occasions in question time and in other mechanisms available to the house. Leaning in to this difficult work is something which we have never turned away from, and we need to continue that work. This work also needs to be done in a way that respects the role of the coroner, in a way that recognises the ongoing work to fund and to support emergency services, telephony and assistance and also which engages with opportunities for growth and long-term improvement to meet the challenges that we now know are going to become more familiar in our landscape of public health than we ever imagined they would. A global pandemic has pushed everyone around the world to their limits—to our limits—and we have the opportunity now to improve. We have the opportunity to continue to build upon an evidence-based approach to policy and to funding. That is exactly what we are doing and exactly what we will continue to do. The government opposes this motion.

Mr BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (11:28): This is a very serious motion about a very serious issue. That there have been failings is probably not up, really, for debate. I think some of the things I hear a lot about—and I give my condolences to the people whose family members or friends may have died due to these things—are the failings of the government, the failings of management and all this, but I do not think enough has been said positively about the people that work there. Now, I have managed to train myself out of saying ‘when I worked for the police’ and ‘when I did this’ and all that. I think everyone was getting sick of it. But in this case I also did work for Intergraph after I left the police force, doing call taking and then dispatching, so I had an interesting perspective of basically going from an end user to a provider of the system within a matter of months.

I am going to make some comments about the nature of the call takers and the dispatchers. I think people need to know how these people are the backbone of making any system work like this. When I was using the radio as a police officer, it was fairly straightforward. I remember I used to get frustrated at delays—and most of my perspective will be from the police—and this and that, but you got used to it. But then one day I left the force and I ended up working at Intergraph and I started doing the call taking. For me a large part of the call taking was quite easy because I knew the way the police force worked. But then came the actual use of the system and things like that, and it started to occur to me that sometimes delays were quite understandable, because all of a sudden it was someone made a call, someone took the call and someone did something with it. I remember clearly one weekday that at about 6.00 pm the traffic lights at the intersection of Centre Road, Springvale Road and Police Road all went out, and I swear we had hundreds of calls in a couple of minutes. Of course everyone in the cars did not know what everyone else in the other cars was doing, but all of a sudden the whole system became bogged down, and when I say ‘became bogged down’, all the call takers were busy. All of a sudden our answering times went from a number of seconds to minutes. I think 2 minutes was the longest one just trying to clear the backlog. From the police officer on the ground’s point of view, it was one call: ‘Oh yeah, the traffic lights have gone out’, and maybe they got an update that there had been a few more, but at the other end there was a whole system toiling under a massive strain, in the end just trying to get that one job out.

It became even more apparent how difficult that was when I became a dispatcher. Obviously you answer a phone call one call at a time, but as a dispatcher all the jobs would come up. You would be sitting there, I will not say swinging in your chair, but there would be jobs here and jobs there. Then all of a sudden it was like a receipt at a supermarket. It would just go chug, chug, chug, chug and jobs would come out. You had to read them all and try to figure out what they were—merge some jobs, do this, do that—and that all took time. Whilst most of my experience was of non-critical stuff, there were some things. Where this is going is that the people that take these calls are very underappreciated. The people who do the dispatching are extremely underappreciated. Even the online supervisors have a critical job to do to get rid of some of the dead weight—some of the jobs are really not police jobs. They also have an oversight capacity. To a degree, as I said, there is justification for what is going on at a higher level. I guess I am one of the few people that has seen it from the bottom up and the top down. Not enough appreciation has been given to the ESTA call takers. There was also the 000 facility of course before that, because what is not said enough is that when you call 000 it goes to a Telstra operator who will then send it to ESTA, and they will route it to the right area and so on.

I have had a little bit of, I will call it, insight into what happens on the ambulance side of things as my wife was an ambulance dispatcher for Intergraph. In fact she was there basically from the time they went live—a little bit before that. Some of the calls she took and some of the dispatching she did surpassed anything I did. She talked to a truck driver whilst he was on the phone, trapped in his truck and dying. She talked with him all the way through until he died. These are the things that haunt people for the rest of their lives. That was just one incident. The nature of these things is that life is not pretty, life is not Disneyland; life is actually quite cruel and grotty. I do not think enough is said in appreciation of these people in the emergency services—from the 000 call taker, the ESTA call taker and the dispatcher to the emergency services unit going out sometimes to a justice facility, sometimes to a hospital, sometimes to a morgue.

To digress a little bit, I did hear the royal commission into the Intergraph contracts mentioned. I will not call it an honour, but I actually sat in on a day of that—the sole time I have ever sat in at a royal commission. It was interesting. Sadly I do not think they ever really got to the bottom of it, but that was 20-odd years ago. At the risk of rambling on, I am just going to finish up by saying that I really want the people that work in these places to know that they are appreciated, that this is not about them and that the work they do is critical. I know some of them will be haunted for the rest of their lives by some of the calls they take. I thank them for doing it.

Mr MELHEM (Western Metropolitan) (11:35): I also rise to speak on the motion moved by Mr Davis. I start by saying that when Mr Davis was the Minister for Health the first thing he did was declare war on the emergency services, and the damage he caused as a result of that is shameful. He is coming here to lecture us about how this government is dealing with the health system and emergency services, yet from when he was the minister, we are still feeling the damage today.

I just want to echo Mr Bourman’s contribution in relation to ESTA workers, and I can say I echo his words and appreciation for the great work ESTA workers are doing on our behalf. They do a first-class job. They have been under a lot of pressure—enormous pressure in fact—for 2½ years. Let us not forget that we have gone through a pandemic the likes of which the world had not seen in 100 years. Every industry, every sector and everyone is struggling to cope. There are worker shocks and shortages, people are not well and people with COVID infections. People forget that.

If the opposition are fair dinkum about trying to address these things—I think there are areas we go to war over—there are areas where we could work together to address them, instead of playing politics with the people who have lost their lives. We are not sure whether they lost their lives because the calls were not taken on time, and that is a matter for the coroner to investigate. Yes, I would like—and we should have and all strive for—a first-class emergency services system. People should be able to take calls within 5 seconds. It is my understanding that ESTA are now back on top of it and are answering over 90 per cent of these calls within 5 seconds and ambulances are being dispatched. But playing politics, I think, is a bit grubby, trying to say people lost their lives. Maybe that is the case, and the coroner will address that issue. I want to join the Premier and the government in saying my thoughts are with the families of the ones who actually lost their lives—we do not know whether it was because the ambulances were not there on time—and our thoughts are with them. We do not want to see that happening. We are living in a first-class, First World country, and we want to make sure we have got First World best practice in our response system, whether that is taking the calls on time or whether it is being able to dispatch an ambulance or a fire truck or police to attend to look after our people.

Yes, from time to time we fail people. From time to time we do not achieve the result we expect to achieve. I go back. Yes, Victorians are entitled to a first-class service that makes sure we adhere to a good response in accordance with the procedures in place. Improvements needed to be made to the ESTA service, and the minister, particularly Minister Symes—I mean Mr Davis is standing here blaming Minister Symes and wanting her to stand aside. She has been in the job for 12 months, and she has responded every time there has been an issue raised and financial support and resources are required—every single time. I mean, fair dinkum, come on. His motion is talking about 2015 and 2016 reports, but Ms Symes was not even in the house then, I do not think—or was she? Yes, she was, but she was not the minister. For me, I do not think Mr Davis is genuine about anything he does. He just tries to throw mud everywhere. In his contribution he talked about how he welcomed the financial support that was given to ESTA but how that financial package has got holes in it. He could not identify the holes, but he said that there are holes in that funding and went on about the government being dishonest. There have been various reviews in relation to ESTA. As Ms Shing talked about, we can go back to why ESTA is the way it is today: it was privatised by the former Kennett government.

Hindsight is always a wonderful thing, but we have got an issue we need to deal with, and we are dealing with it. If anyone can deal with this issue, it is this government, particularly when it comes to health and particularly when it is supporting our emergency services—through the darkest period of 2020, 2021 and 2022, and we still have not recovered from that. A lot of people died as a result of the COVID situation, and unfortunately more people will. I do not think any politicians want to see any of that. We do not want to lose anyone.

We have implemented a lot of measures; all the recommendations of the various reviews either have been implemented or are in the process of being fully implemented. The financial support has been given to make sure we meet these requirements. We are recruiting new staff, we are training new staff, we are working through all the various industrial instruments to make sure we have got enough resources being put into the system. To me, we are doing this for two reasons. We do not want any lives lost in Victoria going forward due to the system not coping well or being unable to respond on time, whether it is dispatching an ambulance to take care of sick people, the police being able to attend a crisis situation or firies being able to attend a fire to put it out. We are doing everything possible to make sure we are able to achieve these targets. The other one, which Mr Bourman talked about, is that we need to take the pressure, the enormous pressure, off our emergency services personnel, starting with the ESTA workers.

Just put yourself, for a moment, in their shoes. If they are not able to take the call within 5 seconds they take responsibility, and they feel responsible for it. They should not, because they know they are all hardworking people; they want to do their very best to make sure they answer that call in 5 seconds. When they do not meet that target they do not need to be lectured by Mr Davis or me or anyone else. They know they have not done the job, but not because of a lack of trying. Yes, they are under enormous pressure.

Yesterday Mr Davis talked about answering questions about how many calls were not answered. The minister responded that, ‘Well, with some of these calls people just ring by accident and they hang up, and all the numbers are there’. Mr Davis wants to make the minister accountable for that—or even ESTA workers. He would not have the balls to actually say ESTA workers are not answering these calls, but I tell you what, given half a chance he would probably think it.

I think enough is enough about playing politics with this. We ought to support ESTA workers. We ought to make sure we give them all the necessary resources they need, which I think this government has done, to make sure they can do their job, to make sure they are able to achieve a high 90 per cent response within the 5 seconds, to make sure there are enough paramedics able to be dispatched to attend to sick Victorians should they need an ambulance, to make sure that fire trucks can actually be dispatched to a fire and to make sure our police force is able to be dispatched to attend and make sure Victorians live in secure environments. So, yes, we are all committed to achieving the best possible outcome and to achieving world’s best practice. We do not want to achieve world’s second-best practice; we want to be the best in the world. That is what we need to be.

I believe we have learned from previous experiences—99 per cent contributed by the COVID situation—and now hopefully with these investments by the government and recruitment of new personnel we should be able to achieve these targets and make sure we are able to respond in a timely manner to Victorians when they need us most. I will finish off in the last 30 seconds by saying I think it is time maybe the opposition stopped playing politics, got on board and put in place some constructive ideas about how we can fix this instead of just simply playing politics.

Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (11:45): I am very pleased to rise and support Mr Davis’s motion, because the core business of any government is to ensure truth and transparency and to keep their citizens safe. We have not seen that with this government. In fact we have seen the opposite. We have seen a lot of spin, cover-ups and lies, quite frankly. I have just listened to Mr Melhem in his contribution, and he was blaming something that happened in the last century under a former Liberal government. That is a good try, Mr Melhem, but the facts are that Labor have been in power in this state for 19 of the past 23 years. That is a fact: 19 of the past 23 years. This health crisis, which 000 is a part of, has been happening for many years, and I want to speak to that point. But what we know is that while Labor has been in power over the last eight years it has descended into chaos, and tragically too many Victorians have lost their lives.

In the general health system, the acute healthcare system, the Productivity Commission highlighted in 2019 that we were the worst funded, we had the worst response times in emergency departments and we were not keeping pace with other states. That is not to do with this issue, I acknowledge, but the point is that system was under stress before COVID. What we know with the 000 system is that it was under enormous stress prior to COVID as well, and we know that through the inspector-general for emergency management’s report. It is just stunning to think that this government will continually blame this on this side for pointing out the failures. There are 33 Victorians that we know of that have died because they could not get through to 000.

I have asked many questions in this house of the minister. I have asked in relation to Mr Dave Edwards from Swan Hill, whose father was found dead on the front lawn after their family could not get through to 000. All he really wanted was acknowledgement from the government. The first he heard from the minister’s office was on the day the 000 report was handed down on the footy finals. The dismissal of Victorians who have suffered so much is just appalling. I want to point out again that it is not only us saying that, it is others saying that. Brett Adie, from the Ambulance Employees Australia Victorian branch, said:

Staffing levels at ESTA were not even keeping up with pre-Covid demand, so what hope did Victorians have that resourcing was adequate to cover Covid?

We know that the government did not prepare through the two years that we went into lockdown after lockdown—000 is part of our health system and should have been part of that preparation, yet it was not done.

I have got a letter from Mr Fletcher, who is the former minister for communications, and I have raised this in the Parliament as well on many occasions. He wrote to the minister back in October of last year, and I will read this letter:

Telstra has advised me that there have been significant delays in Victoria’s Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA) accepting the transfer of Triple Zero calls from Telstra’s Triple Zero operators. The delays are most acute for calls requesting ambulance services.

The ESTA call answer times are impacting Telstra’s ability answer calls from anywhere in Australia as delays to transfer calls to ESTA are utilising most of Telstra’s staff.

He went on to say in a further letter to the minister that 40 per cent of those Telstra staff were taken up to deal with Victoria’s emergency assistance. The original letter was back in October of last year, but the government did not do anything until this year. They said they were putting in 43 staff. Well, we know that they came in sometime this year, but they did not do the preparation. Again I say it has been well known that there were just so many issues before COVID. In that further letter, in December, from Mr Fletcher to Ms Symes, as I mentioned, Mr Fletcher said:

Managing the Victorian queue consistently occupies approximately 40 per cent of Telstra’s national staff, and at times up to 50 per cent of Telstra’s national staff.

That is putting stress on other states. There were huge impacts for the total mismanagement of 000 and the underinvestment, and we know that from the inspector-general for emergency management’s, IGEM’s, report, which said that. That goes back to that need for sustainable funding that was highlighted back in 2015. But they did not do anything about it. In fact they sacked the person that actually brought it to the government’s attention. That was well before COVID. I think it is just disingenuous and again just pathetic that government MPs will stand up and blame our government from last century—23 years ago—for the failures that have occurred in recent years. No, you have had plenty of time to put in money and to put in the resources around the computer-aided dispatch system particularly. We know that the inspector-general for emergency management’s report has confirmed those 33 Victorian deaths were attributed to the 000 failures, so we know IGEM has identified this and we know that there were warnings way back before COVID.

With the storm asthma event in 2016, the government was warned about the ability then. The IT system, which needs so much work done on it, has been ignored. What the government is doing is saying, ‘We’re putting in 400 staff over four years’. Well, we know there is an attrition rate of around 80 staff every year. They are leaving through the door in droves, and that is no reflection on them. To say that we are reflecting on those workers is quite wrong. They have been put under this incredible stress because of the failures of government, because the IT systems are not in place, because the investment has not been put in place. That is the problem here, and I am a bit sick of the government trying to spin their way out of the monumental failures that have occurred over the last 2½ years. Whether it is the failures in hotel quarantine that led to the 801 deaths, whether it is the 33 Victorians that we know about that have lost their lives because they cannot get through to 000 or, as we have found out today, whether it is the seven children in the last few months who have died in emergency departments, the government is ignoring the senior clinicians’ advice.

There are just systemic failures by this government. There are a litany of examples where they continuously failed to provide what should have been there. Let us not forget—and I will talk about this—that we went into lockdown after lockdown because the government said they were preparing our health system. Well, they did not. They did not do what they needed to do. They did not provide the surge capacity. They shut down elective surgery. Of course people are going to get sicker. Of course there is going to be greater demand on emergency services, including 000, the ambulance services and emergency departments, when people are getting sicker because they cannot be seen by their surgeons. They cannot be seen as outpatients. They cannot be seen for their follow-up after cancer treatment. They cannot be seen to have the surgery that they need. There are a litany of examples and there are a litany of failures by this government.

We have said on this side of the house—the Liberals and Nationals have said—that we will invest in these emergency services. It is critical we get it right. That is why we are saying we are shelving the Cheltenham to Box Hill rail track. We are going to put that money that the government is going to spend on that into fixing this system, and that includes the IT systems, because they have had years to do it. Eight years you have been in power, and to blame our government from 23 years ago is completely pathetic, because you have been in power 19 of the past 23 years. These ongoing excuses, this blame—if it was such a big deal, then why didn’t you fix it? You have had decades of being in power in this state. You ignored the issues with the storm asthma. You ignored fixing the system when we were in lockdown. As a result far too many Victorians have died. I say enough is enough. I say to every Victorian: you have got a clear choice in November. You can vote for more of this, more of the cover-up and the cronyism that has gone on around these agencies that keep continuing to cover up, more of the spin, the blame, the deflection and the lack of investment, or you can vote for a real change, because by God this state needs it. We do not need any more of these disastrous cover-ups, and I say support Mr Davis’s motion because somebody has got to be accountable and it should be the minister.

Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (11:55): I rise to speak on Mr Davis’s motion in regard to ESTA, and I will reflect on Ms Shing’s earlier contribution that when we speak about the matters contained in Mr Davis’s motion we need to recognise that there are incredible sensitivities around this matter. I want to extend my condolences and deepest sympathies to families who have lost loved ones in regard to some of the issues that have been canvassed in this motion. I note the minister is in the house right now as we head into question time, and I will be pulled up shortly because the clock will beat me. I want to say at the outset that Minister Symes has gone to great lengths in this chamber to respond in great detail to the questions that have been put in this house regarding the ESTA call takers.

I also want to note Mr Bourman’s contribution, and I think Mr Bourman is spot-on when he talks about the incredible work of our ESTA call takers. Being a call taker in an emergency services environment would be an incredibly challenging environment, and I want to thank all of those emergency services call takers who work for ESTA. They do an incredible job under very difficult circumstances, and it is really important in these sorts of debates that those people know that this government supports the work that they do. We are proud of the work that they do, and we recognise how incredibly valuable they are to our emergency services system and framework.

It is very disappointing that the debate that is conducted in here, and particularly the contributions from those opposite, is always about undermining the confidence that people might have in our services and certainly attacking the workers who are in those emergency services. I know Minister Symes has touched on this before—we see the tragic circumstances where people have died continually used by those opposite, linking blame to calls not being taken and the like, and we know that the minister has gone to great lengths to explain the variety of circumstances in which those things have happened. The only person who can determine a cause of death is actually the coroner. Again, it does not matter how many times we on the government benches say that, those opposite continue to use tragic deaths in this way as a political pointscoring exercise and use families who have lost loved ones in this way. Shame on those opposite, because again, it does not matter how many times we say it and it does not matter how many times the facts are actually pointed out to them, we see those opposite continually trying to repaint history in terms that suit them, continually looking for relevance and using tragic circumstances to do it. It is really disgusting. It is really totally and utterly disgusting. To think that anyone in Victoria might actually consider those opposite as an alternative government, considering the way that they went to war with our ambulance services, they went to war with our nurses and they are now going to war with our ESTA call takers. Again, their stripes do not change, and everybody knows it. Their stripes are very well on display, and we know that we can expect much, much more of the same from those opposite, because they have no credibility when it comes to either health funding or the funding that is required to continue to support our emergency call takers.

Again I want to reiterate for those ESTA call takers who work in our emergency services call areas that this government, the Andrews Labor government, absolutely supports them and acknowledges the very important work that they do. As I said, it is a disgrace that all those opposite want to do is attack workers. Like I said, we know what their history is. We know what their pattern is. They went to war with ambos, they went to war with nurses, they cut billions and billions out of our health sector and then they say that we have got no credibility. Honestly, no-one is listening to that or believing them whatsoever.

Business interrupted pursuant to order of Council of 20 September.