Thursday, 28 November 2024

Ministers statements: emergency services

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:37): I am delighted to rise today to speak about the support we are giving our frontline emergency services workers so they can continue to keep Victorian communities safe each and every day and night. As we go into the festive season, we know that demand for our emergency services workers always increases, and it is our 000 call takers and dispatchers who notice first. As I just indicated, sometimes it is more than 8000 calls a day that these amazing people are taking. I visit them regularly; I speak to them regularly. It gives me the motivation every day to want to ensure that the best service is provided so that we can do everything we can for every single Victorian to support them in making sure that our emergency services are best placed.

Mr Mulholland, unfortunately, I was not quite in a position yesterday to give you the details, which I can give you today, because we finalised the paperwork in relation to Triple Zero Victoria’s next-generation computer-aided dispatch system, or the CAD. I am sure people are really interested to hear a major milestone has been hit. After a competitive procurement process, we have officially appointed our vendors, a consortium of Hexagon and Fujitsu. The $253 million project will deliver a next-gen CAD with the latest technology to create a reliable and secure system for our emergency services. It will improve decision-making and productivity for our call takers, it will ensure it is integrated seamlessly across our other emergency services and it will support the workforce well into the future. It reaffirms the Allan Labor government’s strong history of investment to strengthen Triple Zero Victoria. We have brought on more call takers, ensured better training, established stronger governance and significantly improved the response times in that organisation. Most importantly, we have ensured that Victorians get the help they need when they need it.