Salesa Jenny: Building (Pools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Building (Pools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 16 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6775. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): I rise to take this call on the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill on behalf of the Labour Party. Labour supports this bill going to the select committee. New Zealand is an island nation. We are surrounded by water and yet every year an unfortunate number of our people especially our children drown. Many of us cannot swim. We are very pleased to be debating this bill today. It has taken a number of years for this bill to be discussed and Labour is very happy to be in support of this bill going to the select committee.New Zealand’s half-year drowning statistics were recently released by Water Safety New Zealand. Sixty-one people drowned to 30 June of this year 2015. This is one-third up on the number for the same period last year which was 46. January’s drownings at 21 were more than double the number for January 2014 and Auckland’s drownings of 13 were more than triple the number of drownings in Auckland last year. It is absolutely crucial that as a country we collectively as people do everything that we can to protect especially our children from preventable dangers such as drownings. We owe this duty to our children and we owe it to the future of New Zealand. We must also observe our international obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to take appropriate measures to diminish child and infant mortality.The Fencing of Swimming Pools Act 1987 was designed to increase the safety of young children by requiring pool owners to fence certain swimming pools. Proper fencing puts a physical barrier between young children and the pool. Fencing successfully safeguards our children from drowning where human error can often put children at risk. The wandering attention of those who are supervising our children near pools or forgetting to close doors leading to pools can be fatal.Since the Act came into force 30 years ago the number of young children drowning in home pools has gone down by two-thirds from more than a hundred in the decade between 1972 and 1982 down to 30 in the decade to 2012 which is a great result. In the last 20 years 56 children have drowned outside homes though while at home here in New Zealand. Two-thirds of these children drowned in swimming pools while others drowned in spa pools portable pools or garden ponds. The current bill that is being proposed is in order to reduce this number of child deaths due to drowning in domestic pools by six every 10 years. It is a shame that the Government has not given the same attention it has given to the hazards posed by pools to New Zealand’s most vulnerable children to address the stock of damp mouldy State houses.This Government bill proposes to repeal the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act 1987 as well as to amend the Building Act of 2004. The changes are said to strike a better balance between protecting our children from drowning in home pools and making the legislation more workable for pool owners as well as the local councils. It is intended to reduce the compliance burden on pool owners as well as our territorial authorities in relation to residential pools. The changes could it is said result in cost savings in compliance costs in the order of $17 million if the spa pools with child-resistant covers no longer need to be fenced separately on the property. This bill should establish some certainty especially for councils about their obligations to inspect pools and to do this regularly every 5 years.The existing Act has given rise to a lot of confusion. The very definition of “swimming pool” in the current Act is unclear. The requirements for restricting access to pools are confusing and inflexible. In addition there is no national consistency in the way that councils check pools to ensure that they comply with the Act. The proposed bill would clarify that councils should be inspecting the pools every 5 years. I welcome the attempts to clarify for property owners exactly what their obligations are and to me it also seems sensible to put an onus on the sellers and manufacturers of spa pools hot tubs and portable pools to fully inform buyers of their obligations to encourage compliance.Labour supports this bill to the select committee. This approach will give the general public the opportunity to have their say on the proposed changes. There has been consultation on the issues we are dealing with here as far back as 2008. Consultation on the policy to which this bill would give effect involved water safety groups industry and water safety representatives and Auckland Council amongst others but the general public who own the estimated 60000 swimming pools under discussion and who are the parents of the children we are at pains to protect should also have an opportunity to be heard on this issue. Thank you.