State Emergency Service Control Centre

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (15:10): Supplementary: is the minister now suggesting that he is reversing the government's decision to reject the proposal from the Burns review into having a multi-agency state control centre?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety, Minister Assisting the Minister for Health, Minister Assisting the Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (15:11): As the member alludes to in his question, a recommendation of the Burns report was to have a new facility into which all of the emergency services would move. I am advised that at the time the recommendation came out that it was not the will of the emergency services to all move into one new centre. That creates a whole range of other issues that they were concerned about.

At the time, the government said that, in terms of that specific site in Waymouth Street, it acknowledged that work needed to happen at that site, given a number of the issues that had been identified and we have discussed already. That is where, since that time, a lot of the work has been focused, in terms of considering the future of that site and the long-term future in terms of whether we would upgrade it where it exists and continue the lease there or whether to build a new purpose-designed site or whether to lease another existing building and upgrade that to have the capabilities needed for those agencies in the future.

It definitely is not the intention of the government to bring all of the agencies, including SAPOL and ambulance and others, as was referred to in the Burns report, into one central control centre, but it absolutely is something that we are looking at in terms of the long-term future of the SES and CFS in terms of the Waymouth Street site.