Victoria’s inspector general for emergency management, Tony Pearce, says the state’s triple-zero call-taking service accurately predicted a surge in Covid-related calls but lacked the “confidence” to seek additional funding.
Pearce conducted a review into the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (Esta), released on Saturday, which linked 33 deaths to triple-zero delays, lengthy ambulance waits and command decisions between December 2020 and May 2022.
He found insufficient funding was the “main cause” of Esta’s inability to keep up with record demand during the Delta and Omicron waves and urged the government to come up with a long-term, sustainable funding model for the agency.
On Tuesday, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the government was committed to developing such a model but denied funding was to blame. He had described the system as being “completely and utterly overwhelmed” by an unprecedented amount of Covid-related calls.
Speaking on ABC Radio Melbourne on Wednesday, Pearce said Esta had accurately predicted the surge of calls during 18-month period detailed in his report.
“They were very, very close. In fact, they were a little bit above in some areas the actual outcome,” he said.
“The problem that they had was their funding base was one that allows them to resource on a year-to-year basis for their business as usual. But what it doesn’t do is provide them enough capacity to then ramp up when they get a large surge event.”
Esta is predominantly funded by a levy on emergency services organisations set in 2004-05, which, according to Pearce’s review, has failed to keep up with population and wage growth, as well as increased demand.
Since 2015, the service has relied on annual top-ups from the government, via the state budget.
Pearce said the service “missed an opportunity” to seek urgent government funding in 2020.
“They obviously did not have the confidence to simply go spend the money,” he said.
“I don’t know why that is, but they didn’t have things in place in that period in 2020 … that would have given them enough time to get the training done to have at least a significant number [of] more call takers available when we hit that really bad peak in 2021 that went through to 2022.”
Roger Leeming, who spent a decade on Esta’s board, said he asked the government in late 2015 for almost $30m in ongoing funding, indexed to demand, for the service. Instead, it was provided a one-off payment of $58m over two years.
“It wasn’t just that time that I had asked for more consistent funding. On every occasion over previous several years, we made it clear to the minister in every discussion that was a problem with financial uncertainty,” Leeming told Guardian Australia.
Just months later in January 2016 it was “made very clear to me that I should resign”, Leeming said.
He was one of four of the nine ESTA board members who handed in resignation letters that month. Two others left the board a few months earlier.
The opposition’s spokesperson for emergency services, Brad Battin, said Leeming’s account was “disturbing”.
“Was Mr Leeming forced to resign as chair because he refused to tow the Government line and was fighting for more money for triple-zero?” he said in a statement.
“Victorians deserve straight answers and they still don’t have them.”
A government spokesperson said the emergency services minister “made a decision to review the structure of the [board], after which time four board members resigned”.
“The government has provided substantial funding to Esta both before and during the pandemic to help with demand and put on extra resources when they’ve needed it,” she said, noting $333m was allocated in the May budget to the agency, including to hire 400 more staff.
