$22m committed to fund 25 new jobs at the NT Joint Emergency Services Communication Centre
Along with 25 new jobs at the emergency call centre, an ad campaign will aim to stop Territorians from calling triple-0 for the wrong reasons.
Northern Territory
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The Northern Territory government has committed $22 million to fund an extra 25 emergency call takers in an attempt to stem wait time blow outs.
An education campaign will also be launched to discourage Territorians from ringing through with non-urgent concerns.
Every emergency call made in the NT goes through the Joint Emergency Services Communication Centre (JESCC), based at the Peter McAulay Centre in Knuckey Lagoon.
Police, Fire and Emergency Services aim to answer all calls within 10 seconds, but only 76.4 per cent met that target in 2022-23, down from more than 80 per cent the year before.
St John NT operators, contracted by the government, answered 86.6 per cent of calls for an ambulance within 10 seconds in 2022-23, making it the worst rate in the country.
The data reflects a sharp increase in the number of people ringing through, with JESCC now receiving twice the number of calls for police than it did in 2015.
The $22m investment over four years will also increase CCTV monitoring capacity, with Police Minister Brent Potter saying he expected the number of cameras to increase to more than 1300 over the next financial year.
“The staff at JESCC do such an important job under such immense pressure – that’s why we are investing more in extra staff and upgraded technology to help them support Territorians in their time of need,” Mr Potter said.
“We also need to do an education campaign to clearly articulate to people triple-0 is an emergency, it is life threatening and it is occurring, and 131 444 is for anything else.
“Having a call answered quickly and actioned quickly is what Territorians expect and what we will deliver.”
A review into police resources and culture, led by former NT Police Association President Vince Kelly, has been handed to government and will be released next week.
Chief Minister Eva Lawler said “there would be an alignment” between the Kelly report and Thursday’s $22m announcement, but denied acting prematurely by announcing additional police resources before the report had been made public.
“These are budget announcements,” she said.
“When you see that report it’ll have a number of recommendations and will be more extensive than simply talking about additional dollars for police.”
Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro claimed that while police were dealing with an incident occuring at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre on Wednesday night, “there were over 200 police calls backed up and only one police car on the road”.
“We welcome the additional funding for the emergency call centre, but the critical issue that hasn’t been addressed by Labor is local knowledge from call takers for faster response times,” she said.
“That is why the CLP will base an emergency call centre in Alice Springs to ensure that locals who know the region can assist the people of Alice Springs and the Barkly when they urgently need assistance.”
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