Building (Pools) Amendment Bill

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Green Party supported this bill, the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill, to the Local Government and Environment Committee in order to hear from the experts, such as Water Safety New Zealand, those concerned with children, and from the public on what the real-world implications of the bill would be. Well, we have heard from those submitters and now the Green Party is opposing the bill. We understand the Government’s motivation behind the bill being to save money and reduce the compliance costs for pool owners and, supposedly, also for local authorities rather than the motivation being to reduce the risk of harm and injury and the number of swimming pool drownings. That is the motivation that the Green Party objects to.

This bill repeals the very specific Fencing of Swimming Pools Act and leaves it then to the Building Act 2004 to deal with the issue. The need outlined in the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act for fencing of pools is being replaced with much more general provisions around the need to have physical barriers that restrict access by unsupervised children to pools, rather than a specific requirement to fence. The reason the Government is giving for this is to “strike a balance between reduced compliance costs for residential pool owners and territorial local authorities and maintaining child safety.” In the Green Party’s view, the protection of children is much more important than reducing compliance costs for pool owners and local authorities. Toddlers far too often drown, very quickly and silently, in swimming pools. Each one of those deaths is a tragedy, but the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act has been a major tool in reducing the number of child drownings.

It was interesting to reflect on an article by the former Children’s Commissioner, who reminded the public of the genesis of the Act that we are now repealing, and of how in New Zealand we had a truly awful rate of child drownings in the 1970s and 1980s. In the worst year, 1981, 17 children drowned in home pools. That led, of course, to a campaign that led to the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act in 1987. It has been the Act’s specific focus on actually fencing pools that has helped lead to that major reduction in the number of drownings. That has reduced from an average of 10 a year to three. Of course, each of those is tragic, but there has been a major reduction.

In submissions, the Auckland Regional Public Health Service suggested that the lives of over 200 children had been saved and that there had been several thousand near-drownings that had been prevented by the original 1987 legislation. As the Paediatric Society said in its submission, quoting from Government publications back in 1987, “[the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act] is a simple piece of public health legislation that sends a powerful message to the New Zealand public and pool-building industry. Toddlers have to be prevented from drowning in home swimming pools; the only scientifically proven prevention method is to fence the danger.”

What the Green Party is objecting to in this bill is that we are getting away from that very simple and clear focus, with clear, prescriptive standards in the existing Act that determine how high fences have to be, what the clearance between the bottom of the fence and the ground has got to be—away from those very prescriptive standards to much more general, performance-based standards, in the Building Act, and the fact that the bill allows pool owners to apply to local authorities for waivers and modifications to the pool barrier requirements. Our concern is that that will, potentially, lead to a lot less certainty and a lot less clarity around what is adequate fencing to protect children from drowning in these pools. That is the major reason we are opposing the bill.

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.

I found the last two contributions quite amazing, actually, because this is the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill—it is about fencing off swimming pools and making that mandatory inspection once every 3 years. The previous speakers talked about the fact that the alarms on doors are very irritating—alarms are irritating. They are supposed to be irritating, because they are supposed to be about getting people to take notice that something has gone a bit awry. So, that—either an alarm on a door or a self-closing door to pools—has been one of the pieces of this legislation that has been added in. As I said, the alarms are there to irritate, to bring attention to the fact that something is not quite right. We can do as many things as we like to help prevent children from drowning, but as I heard from the Opposition member across the way, it is about parents’ responsibilities as well.

This bill actually does go quite a long way to ensuring that there are certain rules and regulations in law around having a pool and making sure that it is fenced and that the councils are actually going around—it is a mandatory inspection once every 3 years, as I have said. Some of the councils have actually done it, but not all of the councils, and this is making all of the councils do it, with independent assessors doing those inspections.

The bill also looks at spa pools and hot tubs that already have safety covers over the top of them. They already have a restriction there to prevent children from climbing in, because those covers are tightly in place. Therefore, the committee resolved that a fence was no longer required around the hot tubs and the safety covers. The bill also drives home the fact that retailers in the past—and currently, until this bill receives the Royal assent—did not have to give any safety information. This bill makes them give the safety information when they sell pools, spa pools, and hot tubs to customers. This is a good bill. It does address a lot of the issues that have been put forward at the select committee. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, e ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I am pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill. I just want to cover the opening statement by the Minister for Building and Housing, the Hon Dr Nick Smith. When I read his opening speech, I was somewhat surprised when he mentioned that “Swimming pools are a source of a huge amount of enjoyment for New Zealanders.”—I agree with that. We enjoy our swimming pools because of the healthy exercise—I absolutely agree with that. Kiwi families learn “to get those water skills to … ensure that they are safe, whether they go to the beach or whether they”—wait for it—“… swim in one of New Zealand’s many rivers and lakes.” Is that not ironic? Here we have a Government that promotes a wadeable water standard, and yet the Minister is talking about us all going to swim in the river.

I want to turn to and remind the House of the purpose of this bill. The bill amends the Building Act 2004 and repeals the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act of 1987, to reduce the compliance burden currently imposed on pool owners and territorial authorities in relation to residential pools, while maintaining child safety. Many contributors to this particular bill have debated around getting the balance right between child safety and, of course, compliance costs. There have been people who made that point: have we got it right? One child who dies in a pool in this country is one child too many. We here as legislators need to make sure that while we shift and remove the compliance costs of swimming pool owners, spa pool owners, and hot tub owners, we do not actually, by accident, create more unsafe practices for young people. Essentially, that is what this bill is intending to do.

As previous speakers have said, Labour supported it to the Local Government and Environment Committee so we could hear from the many experts who presented their cases. I want to acknowledge the submissions on behalf of Water Safety New Zealand, the Auckland Regional Public Health Service, the Paediatric Society of New Zealand, Starship Children’s Hospital, and a range of councils. We present this bill because the select committee believes it has got the balance right.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern has Supplementary Order Paper 208 (SOP), which highlights the issue of the alarm system around spa pools and hot tubs. We would like, hopefully, to say that alarming them probably may lead to tragedy with young people, so her SOP is presented here and we do hope the House endorses it. It is replacing the alternative of alarms and states: “doors between the building and the immediate pool area must not be able to be opened by children, and must close and latch automatically after use:”. That SOP goes to the very heart of ensuring that child safety is at the centre of this bill. I hope that when we get to that point, we see there is wisdom in relying on, again, an access limitation to the pool area, as opposed to having an alarm.

I go back to the facts around our swimming history in this country, because we do have the highest rates of drowning in this country. We are an island in the Pacific—many of us got here either by canoe or boat—we are surrounded by water, and it is part of the New Zealand psyche that swimming is something that all New Zealanders enjoy. In fact, from my own education, I learnt to swim in the school pool. But for many of our young people nowadays in primary school, that is not an option for them.

I come back to the bill. We support wanting to make sure that areas for young people, for pool owners, and, of course, for local authorities, and the question around inspection have been addressed. The committee thought long and hard about extending the inspection period—the current Act talks about 3 years—to 5 years. Or is it the other way round—from 5 years to 3 years? But the point is that we heard the submissions and we support that we have more regular inspections of swimming pools. Of course, the issue is what we are putting on to councils, particularly the smaller councils, and whether they have the expertise around having properly skilled pool inspectors. We acknowledge that we should allow the councils to determine the relevant skills that are required to inspect those pools. We support making it easier also for smaller councils particularly.

The other part that we all acknowledge is that the Act that we are amending or repealing, the Fencing of Swimming Pools Act, did actually go quite a long way to saving young people’s lives. We heard many of the statistics that have been put up and shared in this debate around the reduction in the number of young children losing their lives. But, again, the question that begs a response from the Government side is: have we got the balance right? Have we got child safety, with compliance particularly on swimming pool owners, right? Like I said earlier in my speech, one young life lost in a swimming pool or a spa pool is one too many. So we do want to see a continuation of what the Act shows, which is a reduction in the number of drownings in this country. With this new amendment, we want to ensure that that record of reduction is not compromised by the changes that we are proposing in this bill.

I just want to talk again around Labour’s support for anything that reduces child drownings. We do, hopefully, have the support of the House for my colleague Jacinda Ardern’s SOP. To the many submitters who came in front of the select committee—even though I am a member of the select committee, I did not participate in the actual submissions process, but I do know that those who did submit gave some very, very useful feedback so that we could reflect that positively in this bill presented tonight. Like my colleagues on this side, we do support the bill, with those amendments that our colleague Jacinda Ardern has put forward, which are around latching as opposed to having alarms around the pool area. I commend this bill to the House and look forward to its passage with those amendments. Kia ora tātou.

Tēnā koe, e Te Mana Whakawā. As the last speaker in the second reading of the Building (Pools) Amendment Bill, I want, first of all, to acknowledge the Minister for Building and Housing, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, who has brought this bill to the House. It will improve child safety and save more lives. So often, members on the other side of the House like to tell us that increased Government regulation is needed to keep us safe, that removing any regulations makes us less safe, and that the indiscriminate introduction of new regulations proposed by them will keep us even safer. But actually what this bill shows us is that it is about quality of regulations and not quantity. We measure the effectiveness of our regulations by the practical impact that they have on safety, not by the amount to which they inconvenience people going about their daily business. The Building (Pools) Amendment Bill reduces the compliance burden on pool owners, it reduces the bureaucracy required by councils, and, most importantly, it improves child safety—it improves child safety.

Previous speakers on this bill have, in their contributions, talked about the changes that have been made at the Local Government and Environment Committee. I just want to touch on one that I think is particularly significant to the issue of child safety. The bill as drafted sought to impose a 5-yearly inspection regime. We heard very compelling evidence at the select committee about the need for more frequent inspections and the positive effects that this would have on compliance and, therefore, on safety. As a result, the bill as amended will require inspections every 3 years.

I do not want to take any more of the House’s time, so I will just say I welcome this sensible bill passing through the rest of its stages, and I look forward to debating it further in the Committee stage. E mihi atu ki a koutou.

Amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority agreed to.