Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very happy to take a call on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill. I want to exercise a note of caution because of the definition that this bill contains dealing with swimming pools. The definition which is contained in amended section 7 of the Building Act set out in clause 5(a) in Part 1 defines a swimming pool as (i) any excavation or structure of a kind normally used for swimming paddling or bathing; or (ii) any product (other than an ordinary home bath) that is designed or modified to be used for swimming wading paddling or bathing; but (b) does not include an artificial lake". The point that I want to stress at the outset is that any body of water has the potential to be a place where someone can drown and I know this from personal experience. My parents will share a terrible story which could have been even more terrible about my brother splashing in a bucket of water when he was an infant and the handle on the bucket of water came down on the back of his neck. The handle had been standing up he was splashing around in a bucket of water—which you can just imagine; an infant toddler splashing in a bucket of water—and the handle came down on the back of his neck. A bucket would not be captured by the definition of a pool but would certainly have a depth of potentially more than 400 millimetres because buckets are typically taller than that. So a body of water as small as a bucket could be enough to drown an infant and that is the point that I want to make.When we are talking about a pool—actually some of the biggest risks of drowning for infants are when they are left unsupervised with any body of water whether it be a paddling pool a bucket a baby bath or a bath. In all of those things they can drown in them. Therefore there is always going to be an element of education required around that to make sure that parents know that even in the home bath you cannot leave a baby or a toddler unsupervised. They are just as likely to drown if left unsupervised in the bath at home as they are if they are left unsupervised in a paddling pool. We do need to make sure that we are communicating about that and so I particularly support new section 162D in new Subpart 7A of Part 2 of the Building Act inserted by clause 7 which requires the manufacturers and retailers of any such products to actually notify people around what the requirements are. So if you are buying a paddling pool then actually you should be notified what the requirements around the paddling pool are. The question that I have got for the Minister in charge of the bill Dr Nick Smith and for the Government is in respect of the situation around temporary paddling pools. This is the sort of thing that does get raised with members of Parliament all the time. The idea is this: if you get one of those inflatable paddling pools and you blow it up in your backyard and your kids—or grandkids is probably more likely to be the case in my family—are splashing around in the paddling pool always under adult supervision then when it is finished the paddling pool gets drained it gets folded up and it gets put away where do the fencing requirements sit there? Are we expecting people who are using a paddling pool for a hot sunny afternoon to be putting a fence around it or would it be more appropriate to say that there must be supervision? There is no question that a paddling pool should not be left unattended and unsecured but in the case of a temporary pool would it be sufficient to simply say that there has to be adult supervision for the period of time that that pool has water in it?Hon Ruth Dyson: And in Upper Hutt you'd only bring it out 1 day a year.CHRIS HIPKINS: In Upper Hutt we would have it out almost every day of the summer I would have to say to Ruth Dyson. [Interruption] That is right. That is right. It would be very regularly used. I raise this point because this is important. This is the sort of thing that the members of the public are likely to raise with us—this idea that restrictions have gone mad when you have got to put up a fence around a temporary paddling pool that is there only for a matter of hours. So the question that I have got for the Government is—and it is not clear from the bill; I have just sat down and read through the bill and it is not clear from the bill—where those temporary paddling pools are concerned what the rules around those would be. I can certainly support quite restrictive requirements around permanent swimming pools but the ones around temporary paddling pools I think we do have to have an element of common sense when it comes to that. So I am interested in the Government's view on that. The other point that I want to make is on the new restrictions around spa pools or hot tubs—those with lockable childproof lids. I actually think that if Parliament is going to go down the road of saying that they should be exempt from the fencing requirements we also then need to look at the enforcement requirements around using those lids. I lived in a house that had a spa pool with one of the lockable lids in the backyard. The whole of the backyard was also fenced but the pool itself was not fenced. But hand on heart I could not say that the pool was always locked. The lid would have always been closed but I cannot say that if a child had got into the backyard they would not have been able to open it. Although there was a locking mechanism the locking mechanism was not always used. Simply putting a sign on it is not necessarily going to deal with that but there is a degree of responsibility required for pool owners so that if they are going to exempt themselves from the fencing requirements and put a lockable childproof lid on their pool there does need to actually be a requirement to use it and some sanction if you do not use it and something were to happen. I am interested in hearing more about that because again I could not see from the bill—particularly because spa pools and hot tubs are exempted from the inspection requirements—how on earth the use of a lockable lid would be enforced. A spa pool could certainly be again a place where a child could quite easily drown."