Shearer DavidDAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I want to speak obviously in favour of this bill because in terms of what has gone on in the past in the 10 years before the legislation was enacted as has been rehearsed in this House many many times there were about 100-odd people who died—children mainly—and since the legislation has been in operation only about 30 have died. That is 30 too many. What we in the Labour Party are concerned about is that although we recognise and acknowledge that there are some compliance costs around this and we need to make it as realistic and as pragmatic as possible at the same time we want to make sure that we are not slipping or reducing in any way the safety standard that has gone on to save about 70-odd lives. What we want to try to do is to make sure that not only those 70 lives are being saved but also the remaining 30 that have been lost in the last 10 years. For a lot of people who own pools spa pools etc. this is a major cost to them. It is a hassle. It is an encumbrance that they do not really need. But quite frankly although you may look after your children absolutely every second of the day anybody who has children knows that you get distracted. You may have more than one child and a child will disappear and the next thing—it takes only a few minutes before that child finds their way into a swimming pool and tragically loses their life. So it is for that reason that the Labour Party supports this legislation but only on the condition that we support the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that Jacinda Ardern has put up: SOP 208. That is a very simple amendment that simply says that rather than having an alarm that might occur if a child opens a gate that gives them access to a swimming pool the gate itself is self-closing and the gate has a lock on it that a child cannot open. You have to ask yourself what is so difficult about putting in an amendment like that—in the form of Jacinda Ardern's SOP—which would make the safety of swimming pools that much better because they would be more secure. You may not hear the alarm that is being activated. The cost of putting in an alarm might be more expensive. You could think of a thousand reasons why an alarm is a pretty silly idea in terms of keeping a child—an under-4-year-old an under-3-year-old or an under-2-year-old—safe. I can think of a lot of good reasons and a lot of cheap reasons to have a door that is spring-loaded and locks automatically so that a child cannot reach up and open it—like we see in every kindergarten across the country. In every play centre and preschool education centre across the country that sort of locking arrangement means that teachers and everybody else—the parents—know that children cannot wander out on to a busy road—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am sorry to interrupt the member and I should have actually raised this a little earlier. This is about Jacinda Ardern's amendment which is in Part 2 and we are discussing Part 1.DAVID SHEARER: Well I come back to the point I started with which is that the Labour Party supports this legislation. We think that there are some pragmatic changes that can be made that make the compliance for everyday households that much easier. It means for example that the territorial authorities will be inspecting these pools on a 3-yearly rather than a 5-yearly basis. All of that makes good solid sense. But I come back to the point I was making Mr Chair before you made your little intervention there to say that all of that is fine but unless you have the amendment it really does not make much sense because what we are doing is we are effectively opening the door to a lot more problems because children can make their way into a swimming pool environment and fall into the swimming pool.