Shearer David: Building (Pools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Building (Pools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6785. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I was actually anticipating another National Party person speaking—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: So was I.DAVID SHEARER: —but I just wanted to say a few words on this bill because I think it raises some issues that have been addressed by our colleagues there and those are around the actual bill. I want to mention a few of those things but I also want to mention some of the broader context of what is happening in New Zealand as well.First of all as has been said up to now the original legislation has had a profound effect on the number of people who have drowned in swimming pools—it was about 10 per year and is now down to about three per year—and as has been pointed out at the same time there has been an increase in our population and an increase in the number of pools that are available. So in a sense it has had a very good impact on safety for small children and this bill will certainly decrease the compliance costs at the same time as not affecting the safety requirements that we all expect.It will also mean that we will be looking at pools and the fencing of pools as to their performance and the way that they are able to protect kids as well as ensuring that there are regular checks by councils. So it reduces compliance costs it helps councils to make sure that those pools are fenced properly and at the same time it does not diminish any safety procedures.But there is a bigger issue and I think that this debate falls in it as well and it is that as we move into spring and into summer and we are looking forward to spending more time at the beach we should reflect on our appalling drowning record in New Zealand. We have one of the highest if not the highest rate of drownings in the Western World.Perhaps some people might say: “Well that’s understandable.” We have got a very long coastline—11000 kilometres of coastline—we have got 500000 kilometres of rivers and we have got more than 4000 lakes. That is a lot of water and a lot of people recreating around that water as well. But surely that means we have a responsibility as a society and as a community to make sure that our kids know how to swim well.Last year we had 105 drownings in New Zealand—as I said one of the worst rates in the Western World—and this year already we have had 18 people drown in January which was double what it was in January of the previous year. There were 18 drownings in January—double what it was in January of the previous year—and already in the first 6 months of this year 61 people have drowned which is a 30 percent increase on what it was the year before. So the trends are all bad. The trends for drowning in New Zealand are all bad and that is likely to get worse.I want to put forward one of the reasons why they are likely to get worse. When I grew up as a kid our local school had a swimming pool and we all went to swimming lessons 3 days a week. Sometimes it was cold but we had to have an excuse note if we were not going to swim that day—some medical reason or whatever. There was a huge push for all schools to teach swimming in schools and that is now going backwards. We are ending up going in the opposite direction.In the last few years since 2008 156 schools that we know of—and there may well be more—have closed their swimming pools. That is an extraordinary indictment on where our emphasis is on teaching good water safety. Water Safety New Zealand reports that another 130 schools in addition to that 156 have got in contact with it to ask whether there is any way that it is possible to keep their schools’ pools open. Add those two figures together and it is close to 300 schools in just the last 6 or 7 years that have had to close are about to close or have threatened to close their swimming pools.What that means is that a generation of New Zealanders are growing up in New Zealand without the fundamental water safety that we—and certainly I—took for granted when we were growing up in New Zealand and that is because the Government is not putting in the resources and it is not paying the proper regard to water safety that it should. It is focusing on national standards and on reading and arithmetic and anything else that it considers important—nobody is denying that—but what that has meant is that schools do not have the resources to make sure that their school pool stays open.Right now schools get about $700 a year in order to make sure that their school pools are up to standard. That does not even pay for the chemicals let alone the general maintenance. Many of these pools are getting older and as a result they do need maintenance and schools are unable to ensure that those pools stay open.So next week as I understand it Jonathan Coleman the Minister for Sport and Recreation is going to be announcing a water safety campaign. If it does not address the issue of schools losing their pools and an entire generation of New Zealanders not being able to do the basic swimming strokes and being able to survive in the water it will be a failure. So I certainly hope that next week we get to hear from this Government that it is serious about water safety it is serious about teaching our kids to swim it recognises that schools have an important role and it gets in behind schools and makes sure that they have the pools and they have got the backing to ensure that they can run an effective school swimming programme as they should and as we have done for a number of generations. We have always put a priority—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!DAVID SHEARER: —on children’s swimming safety and that is what we need to be doing right now.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was not closing the member down just reminding him that there is a bill to speak to. So if he would like to confine his last 2 minutes to that that would be appreciated.DAVID SHEARER: I will come back to the bill because the bill says that it wants to reduce the number of people who are drowning and we have to see that in the broader context of the increased number of people who are drowning in New Zealand. We have made some inroads in fencing off pools but we are missing the bigger picture which is that kids and a whole generation is out there unable to swim because of the negligence of this Government.Bill read a first time.Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.