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This was published 7 months ago
Hundreds of triple-zero calls left waiting, despite pass for agency benchmarks
By Aisha Dow
More than 1400 Victorians who rang triple zero for police in a single month were forced to wait at least one minute for their calls to be answered, official data shows, with insiders warning that domestic violence victims and others in life-threatening situations are being left exposed.
“We’ve had people run off the road and attacked with axes and things like that … these are really time-sensitive, really critical things,” one police emergency call-taker, who wasn’t authorised to speak publicly, told The Age.
Emergency call-takers fear delays in connecting calls leave people in life-threatening situations exposed.Credit: Paul Rovere
The call-taker – one of three who spoke to The Age – said they had experienced instances of family members calling to report a suicide or people being violently assaulted waiting a minute or more for an answer.
“By the time I’ve gotten to talk to somebody, it’s just background noise – all you can hear is the argument and the assault happening in the background.”
“If I had been able to talk to [the victim] as soon as she called, maybe she could have yelled her address out, and we’d at least know where we’re going.”
Recently rebadged as Triple Zero Victoria, the emergency call-taking agency received a major injection of new staff and funding after this masthead uncovered a crisis of call answering delays and other problems linked to 33 deaths between 2020 and 2022.
An internal dashboard shows a maximum wait time of more than one minute for emergency police calls at Triple Zero Victoria in late December.Credit: Communication Workers Union
Triple Zero Victoria chief executive Debra Abbott recently said the community could be reassured the service would be there for them at their time of need.
However, data obtained by The Age via a freedom of information request has revealed that a small, but notable proportion of emergency police calls have taken more than a minute to be answered.
It took between one minute and 119 seconds for 1361 emergency police calls to be answered by Triple Zero Victoria between November 20 and December 20 last year, a figure representing just over one in 100 police calls made during that period.
Another 106 callers seeking police waited more than two minutes to connect, the data shows.
An internal dashboard shows a maximum wait for emergency ambulance calls of more than 90 seconds. The Victorian Ambulance Union says this photo was taken in recent weeks.Credit: Victorian Ambulance Union
There have also been delays involving the ambulance triple-zero service, according to call-takers and unions. The Victorian Ambulance Union shared what it says are recent images from the emergency communication centres showing waits of 90 seconds for calls.
The photographs – published as part of ongoing industrial action as triple-zero workers negotiate over new pay and conditions – show one instance where the maximum wait time for emergency ambulance calls was one minute and 37 seconds and there were six ambulance calls waiting to be answered.
“That’s six patients who needed an ambulance desperately and would have been in enormous distress waiting over a minute for their call to be answered,” Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said.
Despite the new evidence of ongoing call answering delays, Triple Zero Victoria continues to exceed its call-answering benchmarks.
In November last year, 90.6 per cent of emergency police calls were answered within five seconds, well above the monthly standard of 80 per cent. In the same month, 97.6 per cent of emergency ambulance calls were answered within five seconds, beating the benchmark of 90 per cent.
This apparent contradiction – of high overall monthly performance alongside ongoing delays for many hundreds of calls – has prompted renewed calls for an overhaul of the agency’s benchmarks.
Although 80 per cent of police emergency calls and 90 per cent for ambulance calls over a month are required to be answered within five seconds, there is no maximum wait time set for the remaining calls.
In May 2022, former Victoria Police chief commissioner Graham Ashton’s review into the triple-zero service, then known as the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, found that the performance standards were a “key area of concern” and “not fit for purpose”, as they put the focus more on meeting the monthly benchmarks than caller outcomes.
The Victorian government on Tuesday confirmed that emergency management commissioner Rick Nugent was developing new performance standards to meet community expectations.
“We’ve provided more than $363 million to reform and strengthen Triple Zero Victoria – helping them to meet demand by employing more than 400 extra staff, building better support and surge capability for busy times, strengthening mental health support for staff, and supporting critical technology upgrades,” a government spokesperson said.
Communication Workers Union secretary Sue Riley said Triple Zero Victoria was still reliant on overtime to ensure there were enough police call-takers on duty.
She said many staff members were burnt out, struggling to access leave or take breathers between calls because they were “smashed for their whole shift”.
Images of an internal dashboard taken on Tuesday afternoon showed an occasion where four police emergency calls were waiting at one time and a maximum wait time of 59 seconds. Dashboard images from late December and early January showed up to 11 callers waiting and a maximum wait time of one minute and 35 seconds.
Riley said the current performance benchmarks were fundamentally flawed.
“Triple Zero Victoria can see significant variation in performance over any given month, but if the overall monthly percentage meets the benchmark then performance is deemed to be compliant,” she said.
A Triple Zero Victoria spokesperson repeated earlier assurances that the public could trust its call-takers and dispatchers would be there for them in their time of need.
The fact the service was exceeding its existing benchmarks demonstrated it was meeting community expectations, the spokesperson said.
“As an emergency services organisation, Triple Zero Victoria has robust measures in place to plan for, respond to, and meet periods of peak demand.”
Unions have long called for safe staffing levels to be embedded in the services’ enterprise agreement, which Hill said would require Triple Zero Victoria to recruit or roster on more staff if certain triggers were hit.
Hill said the union’s members were not confident the service had reformed enough to weather future surges of demand.
Another police call-taker, who was not authorised to speak publicly, argued the focus on meeting monthly targets as the key measure of success led to the COVID-19 collapse of call-taking capacity.
“[Because] the targets are spread out over an entire month, you could hypothetically put the answering machine on [for] a Saturday night and everyone go home, but then load up to 100 per cent staff for the rest of the month and still meet your target,” they said.
“You can see how it creates a farcical situation where Triple Zero Victoria will say, ‘We’ve met our targets for the month’, and we say to them, ‘Well how come there were 10 people waiting over a minute and a half at three o’clock in the afternoon’.”
If you or anyone you know needs support, call Lifeline on 131 114 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
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