Australian Emergency Call Centres in 2011

This is the ideal.......

The Triple Zero (000) Emergency Call Service is an operator-assisted service that connects you to the relevant emergency service organisation (police, fire or ambulance). Telstra is currently responsible for answering calls to the emergency service numbers Triple Zero (000) and 112, and transferring them, with relevant associated information, to the requested emergency service organisation.
You should only call Triple Zero (000) when a situation is threatening to life or property, or time-critical. If a situation is not urgent but does need the attention of an emergency service organisation, you should obtain the number of your local police, fire or ambulance service from the phone book or by calling directory assistance. ...........
If, at any time and for whatever reason, it is not technically possible for Telstra to transfer a Caller No Response Call to the IVR, it must instead forward it directly to the Police as if it were a genuine request for emergency police assistance. [Australian Communications and Media Authority, 4 June 2002 & 5 April 2011]

This is the reality for many.......

The Queensland flood inquiry has heard a triple-0 operator chastised a mother and her son, shortly before they were swept to their deaths.Two emergency calls made by Donna and Jordan Rice were played to the inquiry as their family wept quietly in the courtroom. [ABC Lateline, 19 April 2011]

Police Association vice-president Scott Weber said police were providing a "bare minimum" coverage of response to triple-0 calls. [The Telegraph 17 March 2010]

This is an emergency, an emergency," he could be heard shouting down the phone line. "I'm lost, I haven't had water for a long period of time. I'm about to faint."
In all, six calls David made to emergency services that day went dead due to what could have been his increasingly fragile health as well as poor reception.
In his final harrowing call, played on the first day of an inquest into his death, David begs the operator, "Can you send a helicopter?" before he is interrupted by her and placed on hold. [The Sydney Morning Herald 15 April 2009]

At 12.56am, early Saturday morning, I rang triple 000 to call an ambulance for a recently discharged surgical patient who was rapidly going into shock with severe internal bleeding.
The phone rang … and continued to ring. It took nearly three minutes get to speak to an ambulance call centre operator.....Then the nightmare began. [Crikey 24 May 2009]

In the dark of February 5, the 27-year-old ran to the telephone connection - it had been deliberately turned off. She reconnected it, dialled the emergency number and it diverted to Cairns police, a thousand kilometres away. She revealed how she had just been raped and that the alleged perpetrator was still outside her building with several of his drunken mates. He'd also stolen a bottle of vodka and she feared he would be back. The police officer said he would immediately ring the community police officer on the island, but reported back to the victim that the local representative of the law had responded it was raining and he was not prepared to walk around to the crime scene in the rain, even though he was told the alleged perpetrator was still on the premises. [The Australian 10 March 2008]

In January 2001, Peter Taber and Ian Styman bound and gagged Joy Alchin, when they broke into her home near Nowra.
They took her money and left.
Styman called Triple-O and asked for police to be sent to the house, but the call was not responded to and Mrs Alchin died nine days later. [ABC News 26 April 2007]

One of two sisters stabbed to death in their Melbourne home early last Saturday called tripl-0 for help as she was dying. But Telstra says the emergency call lasted five seconds before it was terminated, amid reports the woman's throat had been cut, making it impossible for her to speak. Telstra's triple-O service received a call from a mobile phone belonging to one of the sisters about 1:44am on Saturday, more then 19 hours before the bodies were of Colleen Irwin, 23, and Laura Irwin, 21, were found in their Altona North home. Telstra spokesman Andrew Maiden said an operator answered the call but there was no voice or background noise and the call was terminated, at the caller's end, after five seconds. [Geelong Advertiser 4 February 2006]

The Ombudsman is inquiring into complaints that police failed to respond to desperate triple-O calls from the children of a man who was being assaulted.[ABC Stateline 11 March 2005]

Says it all really