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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-09 Daily Xml
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SECURITY EXERCISE

Mr BIGNELL (Mawson) (14:28): My question is to the Minister for Health. What precautions has the South Australian government taken to ensure that the state's health system is prepared to cope with a terrorist attack?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:28): This is a serious matter. It is unfortunate that members opposite make light of it. Sadly, the possibility of a major terrorist attack in South Australia must be taken seriously and it is therefore necessary to plan for such an eventuality. Today, about 200 staff from the Department of Health, and a similar number from other agencies, including the South Australian Federal Police and other emergency services are taking part in Exercise Southern Rebound at Football Park.

Exercise Southern Rebound involves a simulated terrorist attack at Football Park during a Showdown. According to the scenario, today is a public holiday Monday which features a Showdown, an Adelaide Cup meeting and a multicultural food and wine festival at Elder Park. The initial emergency response was limited to the resources that were available at the same time last Wednesday. Naturally, resources within the health system and other emergency systems are not all on stand-by for emergency situations, and it is important that these training exercises replicate a real situation as closely as possible.

Exercise Southern Rebound is part of the annual exercise program of the Protective Security Coordination Centre (PSCC) which has been developed in consultation with commonwealth and all state jurisdictions. It is a joint state-commonwealth investigation and consequence exercise being conducted to evaluate our capability to manage the consequences of a terrorist incident, in accordance with jurisdictional and national counter-terrorism arrangements.

From a health perspective, the aim of the exercise is to provide realistic training and to test response and coordination for a critical incident which involves mass casualties and the operation of hospital and state control centres. The exercise will also test our pre-hospital and hospital systems for the management of mass casualties, including decision-making, triage, documentation and patient flow. It would also enable us to practise national coordination of a range of responses that might be required between state and commonwealth governments. In fact, I understand that part of today's exercise involved emergency blood supplies being flown in through the National Blood Authority. The primary hospitals involved in today's exercise were the Royal Adelaide Hospital, the Flinders Medical Centre, the Women's and Children's Hospital and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

Commonwealth funding has been secured to back-pay staff at the hospitals participating to ensure that normal service provisions are not affected during today's exercise. Aside from today's exercise, both the federal and state governments have put in place measures to ensure that Australia is well equipped to respond. Within the health arena, these measures include establishing the Australian Health Protection Committee, which plans and prepares for emergencies. The committee includes a group of experts from across jurisdictions who meet at least four times a year. South Australia is actively involved with the commonwealth government agencies in preparedness planning for an all-hazards approach to unexpected critical events. Today's exercise will continue throughout the afternoon. I will be receiving a briefing on today's events at the Emergency Management Council briefing this afternoon.

The full internal debriefing and the evaluation will, of course, take several weeks. Identifying and rectifying any problems with the cross-agency and cross-jurisdictional exercise being undertaken today will help to prepare us to deal with a real situation should the unthinkable actually occur. I take this opportunity to thank the staff in the health system for their cooperation during this training.

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