Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you so much Mr Deputy Speaker for this brief call on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill. This is a bill that has been designed to reduce the compliance burden currently imposed on pool owners as well as on territorial authorities in relation to residential pools while maintaining child safety. New Zealand is an island nation. We are surrounded by water and yet every year so many of our children—so many of our people—drown because too many of us do not know how to swim. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of drowning. We are third in the OECD countries—third only to Finland and Brazil. I have got to say that as parents we are fortunate in this House that we can afford to pay for our children to learn how to swim but there are so many vulnerable and poor families who cannot afford to pay for those swimming lessons. In fact so many of them cannot even afford to pay for swimming togs for their children. We have NGOs now that donate swimming togs particularly to those children who cannot afford to buy their own. But there are so many of our kids who do not even have the option of learning how to swim at school especially in low-income areas that no longer have pools. These kids do not have the access to pools to be able to learn how to swim at school. So when we have parents who cannot afford swimming lessons when we have so many schools in low-income areas that do not have pools any more it is no wonder that so many of our kids drown because they do not know how to swim. It is crucial that we do everything we can to protect our children from the dangers of drowning. We owe it to our tamariki the future of New Zealand. The Labour Party supported this bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee in good faith because we were told in the regulatory impact statement that the bill would save more lives than the current pool fencing legislation. However having read the evidence presented to the select committee we now believe that that claim was questionable. For example as quoted by my colleague from the Greens the Paediatric Society submitted that the only thing that would improve the current rate of pool drownings would be improved compliance for fencing. Water Safety New Zealand agreed with that submission. The vast majority of the 19 preschool kids who drowned in home pools drowned because unfortunately were no fences gates or doors. The number of children who suffer serious or permanent damage or near-death drownings in non-compliant pools is actually much higher than 19. One of the biggest changes that the bill made after it went to the select committee was a recommendation to increase the pool inspection cycle to 3 years instead of 5 years. Labour pushed very hard for this amendment and we are very very pleased that it was taken up at the select committee. There is however still an issue and if it is not addressed Labour will not continue to support this bill. There is a new clause in the bill that specifies that an alarm is an alternative to an automatically closing door. This would be a backward step. Alarms are not sufficient protection for our children around pools for two reasons. Firstly the condition that leads to drowning is distraction of a caregiver. An alarm will not actually prevent that from happening. Only a fence to the pool would actually prevent the harm befalling our children. Secondly an alarm every time it goes off is quite irritating to family members and we know already what happens when there are oversensitive alarms that are fire alarms: people just turn them off so it is no longer a protection. Labour has tabled Supplementary Order Paper 208 to remove alarms as a suitable alternative to automated doors and if this is acceptable to the Government we will continue to support the bill. Thank you very much.