Emergency Services Volunteers

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (15:27): The role and dedication and sacrifice of our CFS and SES volunteers are things I think every member in this place appreciates. We should always value our volunteers. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for very wet, windy weather again, and it will see our volunteers and, I should say, our paid fire service, the MFS fireys, out doing what they do—that is, making South Australia a safer place and the lives of South Australians better for it.

The need to make sure that we do value our volunteers was really brought home to me recently when there were some significant weather events and there were some delays in responses by some of our volunteers. I criticised those delays in responses not as a critique of the volunteers; in fact, nothing could be further from the truth, as I value our volunteers and the way they do what they do—that is, leave their families, leave their jobs, and take time day or night to serve the people of South Australia and to do so very willingly. The last thing I would ever do would be to criticise their dedication.

However, I am very concerned about the way our computer-aided dispatch system, SACAD (South Australia Computer Aided Dispatch system), responds for our volunteers and, in fact, for all our emergency services. In 2007, an MOU was signed by the three chief officers of the MFS, CFS and SES to provide the closest, fastest and most appropriate response. To make sure that that response was going to be put in place, SACAD was to be adjusted if we found that that was not happening.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a huge weather event. Over 1,000 calls came into the Adelaide fire and SES phone lines, and so the volunteers were inundated with calls that, in some cases, had to be prioritised, had to be stacked. But when volunteers, particularly SES volunteers, are driving past three or four CFS stations to do a job which CFS volunteers are more than willing, trained and able to do, then that seems to me an abuse of volunteer time.

I have had a couple of occasions recently when I have responded as a CFS volunteer along with SES volunteers and known that the SES volunteers, because of their location, would take longer to get to the incident which they did not really need to come to because it was a relatively straightforward incident and which could have been handled by the CFS and did not need the specialist skills that the SES are trained to use.

Can I just praise the SES, combining with the CFS, down at Yankalilla the other day for getting a pony out of a well. Specialist animal rescue skills were used, and it was certainly a fantastic result. However, when volunteers are travelling for many kilometres—which involves a long time away from home, away from their families and away from their jobs, in the middle of night so that when they do get up to go to work the next day they are tired—to me that is wrong. It is about making sure that the closest, fastest and most appropriate response is the one that is used.

The people who are in distress, the people who make the phone calls, do not care what colour the truck is or what colour the uniform is: they want the help. So, the SES then is triaging calls, prioritising calls, and then SES members, volunteers, are willingly—not begrudgingly but very willingly—going out and doing call after call, when they could have that load shared by other emergency services (the MFS and particularly the CFS in the Hills areas), such as the CFS and those volunteers would not then be so exhausted.

I have heard reports of SES volunteers turning up to a job absolutely dead on their feet because they have been working their backsides off. We should recognise the fact that these young men and women—some of them not so young—will not give up. They will keep going. They will keep doing their job to the best of their ability. So, we must value them. We must share that load. We must give the closest, fastest, most appropriate response not only to the caller but also to the volunteers so that they can stay home with their families, stay rested and go to work.

The people who employ these volunteers can also not have to compensate for that volunteer time so much. We need to value our volunteers. Our volunteers give so much. They sacrifice so much—family time, work time and life experience time. They just need to be valued by this government. I know that we do that, but we need to make sure that in this particular case we are using a despatch system, a call prioritising system, that does recognise that a load-sharing regime can be put in place that is working better than the one now.

It is not SACAD; it is information going into SACAD. So, let's make sure that those changes that were signed off in 2007 are put in place and that we value our volunteers.

Time expired.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired. The member for Wright.