St John Ambulance Anniversary

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. S.G. Wade:

That this council—

1. Recognises the 135^th anniversary of the establishment in Australia of St John Ambulance;

2. Acknowledges the significant contribution that St John Ambulance has made and continues to make in support of the health and safety of every South Australian through the delivery of life-saving first aid services;

3. Acknowledges the invaluable contribution of St John Ambulance’s highly skilled and qualified volunteers who dedicate their time to delivering emergency first aid and community care services;

4. Acknowledges the important role St John Ambulance plays in strengthening emergency preparedness, response and recovery across the state, including through its ongoing support of the State Emergency Management Plan; and

5. Acknowledges the crucial first aid training St John Ambulance delivers, including through its First Aid in Schools program.

(Continued from 14 November 2018.)

The Hon. T.T. NGO (16:56): I rise briefly to recognise the 135 years of service provided by St John Ambulance Australia to the South Australian community. We see this service throughout our community, from helping people become more comfortable through easing pain to saving lives.

Sadly, many of us probably do not think too much about this service until we or someone we care about needs their help. Maybe you have seen St John volunteers at your children's sports, or you or your family may have sought their assistance at the Royal Adelaide Show or at a music festival, or you may have completed first aid training with St John Ambulance.

As a not-for-profit charity, St John Ambulance relies on the selfless nature of the work of more than 1,000 volunteers to support the charity's work. In the past year alone, St John Ambulance has attended more than 2,300 events, treating more than 18,000 patients and providing life-saving first aid training for more than 48,000 adults and 8,000 primary school children.

The St John Ambulance remit now extends further from what were its initial operations. In 2004, St John Ambulance SA was formally cast in its state emergency role under the State Emergency Management Plan. During times of disaster and extreme weather events St John Ambulance organises responders to work alongside other key agencies such as SA Police, the SA Ambulance Service, the MFS and the CFS to help members of the community when their need is at its greatest.

There are some amazing stories to tell about this organisation's work, and I would like to share one of them today. One of the great successes of St John Ambulance is its ability to mobilise primary school aged volunteers, like 14-year-old Hayley Spencer. Hayley knew exactly what to do when she saw a classmate lying shaking on the floor of the classroom. Her response to the situation was decisive, as she explains:

I told everyone to get off her, she is having a seizure. There was foaming at the mouth, so I knew it, I knew what to do.

Hayley took off the girl's glasses and placed her own jumper under the girl's head to keep her safe until the seizure stopped. Hayley explained her action further by stating:

You leave them and remove danger if you need to, until they stop convulsing, and put them in the recovery position and when they are coming out of it you continue speaking to them.

She also said:

She was a little agitated and unsure of what was going on, so I reassured her…I said to lay there for a few minutes until she felt okay and the teacher had come back with the nurse.

Kids gain this knowledge through the St John First Aid in Schools program. Every child in primary school can be a lifesaver. They just need the skills and confidence to leap into action. Since 2013, the free First Aid in Schools program has been delivered to 50,000 South Australian primary school students. I understand that the training is designed with kids in mind, with the use of interactive group-based and fun activities. With that, I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (17:00): I rise to speak in support of the motion of the Hon. Stephen Wade. St John Ambulance would be among the most trusted group of volunteers in Australia. Their tireless and effervescent members provide an invaluable service to our communities. At virtually any event where there is a large gathering of people, they are there to provide support and, of course, where it is required, first aid.

Most Australians today lead busy lives, but we never know what is around the corner, particularly when it comes to life-threatening emergencies. First aid saves lives and no organisation delivers the training as effectively as St John, which has been delivering these services for 135 years. There is a sense of reassurance when you see their distinctive black and white clothed and bereted first responders nearby, ready and willing to assist.

A few years back as a journalist on Today Tonight, I produced a story on a heartwarming emotional reunion of two men whose lives crossed in a grave situation. One had a terrible motorcycle accident on a quiet country road in which he severed a leg. He was moments from bleeding to death when the other happened upon the distressing scene. He knew exactly what to do to stem the bleeding, calm the victim and be on stand-by until help arrived. He was a St John volunteer.

In another story, I joined several mums and dads in a novice first aid training session at St John's Unley centre. Would you know what to do if a person suffered a health episode right before you, if a child was choking or drowning, how to treat burns or cuts or a toddler who was having a febrile convulsion or a seizure? In the event of a heart attack, would you know how to perform CPR? It was an uncomfortable feeling to realise how helpless we were and how little we knew about carrying out first aid in those types of situations when somebody's life is in your hands.

St John's First Aid in Schools program is an essential tool for young people to learn valuable skills. I would like to see it expanded to also include first aid training as part of the process in gaining a driver's licence. St John carries a vision to build stronger communities through first aid and the provision of first aid related services and products. One of its prime goals is the access to and the provision of more automated external defibrillators. Its Australian Hearts campaign is seeking to ensure Australians are within three minutes of an AED in the event of someone suffering an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. SA-Best fully supports this campaign and we are now looking at introducing regulations that will mandate AEDs in new commercial buildings with floor spaces greater than 200 square metres, as defined under the Building Code of Australia, and much like essential fire safety provisions.

Ambulance Victoria data shows that defibrillation by a bystander more than doubles the chance of a patient leaving hospital alive compared to waiting for a first responder to undertake resuscitation. An astonishing 64 per cent of patients defibrillated by the public leave hospital alive.

Around 30,000 Australians die from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest every year. In South Australia every day, an average of five people experience a sudden cardiac arrest. Our own Greens colleague Mark Parnell is one of those statistics, as am I. I can report that Mark is now doing well and recovering at home from open heart surgery last week. I am sure you will all want to wish him the speediest of recoveries, if you have not already done so.

SA Ambulance response times are around eight minutes. This is an excellent rate compared with many overseas countries, but still highlights the need for an earlier intervention rate to have a chance of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. This is where public access defibrillators come in. AEDs are safe and easily used by any person and are the only known definitive treatment for sudden cardiac arrest. They are also quite inexpensive at around $1,500 per unit. St John arranges supply and installation. It was heartening to hear the Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor announce recently that more AEDs will be installed in the CBD. In the US city of Seattle, where the company that makes them is based, they have donated one for every street corner.

I am sure there are people working in this place who would not know of the existence of AEDs here or where they are located. I urge all to take note of where to find them and to learn how to use them. If you do need to brush up on your first aid skills, contact St John to take part in one of their classes. It is a fun and informative exercise, but more importantly, it can be a life-changing decision. I commend the motion to the chamber.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (17:06): I rise to very wholeheartedly and enthusiastically support the motion. I was not going to speak, but I took the opportunity to do a little bit of research in a book that was in my office. Most members here would not know that I have had an extremely long connection to the Ambulance Service through my father. He passed away some eight years before I was elected and I have never really spoken of him, but I thought this was an opportunity to just say a few words.

He joined the Tatiara (Bordertown) Ambulance Service in 1952. He was about 30, having returned from the Second World War as a pilot in the English Royal Air Force. He joined that in 1952 and some 31 years later, he was chairman of the St John Council of South Australia, which was the governing body, if you like, at that time. I can remember my young days, growing up and spending time with dad as they would receive new ambulances, things like the 1959 Chrysler Royal and some of the early Holden panel vans that were delivered and, of course, the construction of the Tatiara Ambulance Service's headquarters in Bordertown. It was somewhere I used to go and join my father regularly as it was being built.

I have very fond memories, although I still say I never went on a holiday with my parents. Dad always came to the St John Ambulance annual conference in Adelaide, which I think went for two or three days, usually around early November or October. My annual holiday was spending a couple of days with my mum here, going to places like the zoo while dad was at the St John Ambulance annual conference.

It is interesting to look back now at some of the achievements in the Bordertown area and the Tatiara service. I was fortunate enough to be invited down a few years ago to speak at their 60^th anniversary. A lot of these regional communities had ambulances but were not connected to the St John network. It was not until the late fifties that that started to happen. I think I recall one of them being provided some oxygen equipment as an incentive, so they got some actual hardware and support from the St John network to make it happen.

It has been quite a journey that this service has been on with a lot of hardworking volunteers. I do have one example, even of my own. The Hon. Frank Pangallo spoke about an issue and the response times. Well before being elected, Meredith and I needed an ambulance on the farm. I had to call Mount Gambier. We are 10 minutes from Bordertown. Nineteen minutes later, that ambulance drove into our farm at about 11 o'clock at night. If you think about it, they were volunteers who were asleep in their beds and they actually got out of their beds, got to the ambulance and made it to our farm (10 minutes out of town) in 19 minutes. It is a truly remarkable service that they provide.

I have one little anecdote from the 1980s. Given that I am a member of the Legislative Council, I would just read a little bit from my father's book in relation to the Legislative Council. It says:

In November 1982 a change of government brought the Labor Party to power under John Bannon. His minister for health, John Cornwall, who had strong union support, at first regarded St John with some suspicion. It was he who once quipped—

my father has co-authored this book—

that a 'Dad's Army' should not be running an essential public utility like the state's ambulance service. He came into office to make a thorough overhaul of the service. The result was two major public inquiries into the service. The first conducted by Professor Louis Opit in 1982-83; the second, a select committee of the Legislative Council chaired by the minister Cornwall himself, ran from October 1983 until November 1984.

Select committees are still no quicker today than perhaps they were then. It continues:

As St John chairman I sought and was granted an opportunity of giving evidence to the Cornwall committee, along with [other members of the St John hierarchy].

I just thought it was interesting that we are talking about the eighties, so we are talking another almost 40 years on that a Legislative Council select committee determined the future. It continues:

[As a] consequence of this committee's findings that the Bannon government formally recognised St John's tenure of the service, finally giving this legislative underpinnings successive governments had neglected putting in place since the [Sir Lyell] McEwin [and Sir Edward] Hayward deal in 1951. The inquiries and subsequent preparation of legislation exacted a pretty heavy toll on the St John senior management. For more than three years during the 1982-85 there was endless drawing up of submission negotiation with interested parties, liaison with government departments, and provision on demand of information about the service.

They are just a few words to acknowledge the great contribution the St John Ambulance service makes to South Australia but also to put on the record that it was something that I was, by default, involved in with my father and the great contribution that he made in the local community.

It is interesting, the Hon. Frank Pangallo talks about first aid. The very first thing I did upon leaving school was to get my first aid certificate. I must say, they said you should have a refresher every three years. That, sadly, is 42 years ago and I have not had any refresher. I am guilty of not having a refresher but I do get informed by my wife, who is a current first aider, and I think I can still do CPR because it is all about cardiac massage now and not about breathing. With those few words, I absolutely commend the motion to the chamber.

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (17:13): I would like to thank honourable members for their contributions, namely the Hon. Tung Ngo, the Hon. Frank Pangallo and the Hon. David Ridgway. I would like to acknowledge your long personal association with St John Ambulance and the fact that Karen Limb, the Chair of St John Ambulance SA, has joined us today.

2018 marked the 135^th anniversary of the establishment of St John Ambulance in Australia. As has been highlighted in contributions, St John Ambulance is a respected not-for-profit charity delivering life-saving first aid and emergency services both in South Australia and across the nation. The 2017-18 statistics demonstrate the dedication of more than 1,000 volunteers in this state: 18,931 patients were treated; almost 18,000 community care hours were provided; 272,000 public training hours were delivered; 48,883 public training certificates were issued; 8,197 schoolchildren were trained in first aid; and the total value of volunteering hours was more than $5 million.

The St John Ambulance service and these volunteers make an extraordinary contribution to the health and wellbeing of South Australians in so many ways. As Minister for Health and Wellbeing I would particularly like to thank St John Ambulance for their continued support of the State Emergency Management Plan. During times of disaster and extreme weather events, St John Ambulance mobilises their volunteers to work alongside a whole range of agencies, including the SA Ambulance Service, to protect and serve the people of South Australia.

I congratulate St John Ambulance on reaching 135 years, and thank them on behalf of the government and people of South Australia for their service to this state. I thank honourable members for their contributions and I commend the motion to the council.

Motion carried.