Gavin Walker: Acting CEO of Water Safety NZ calls for ban on unfenced above-ground pools

There are calls for a Government crackdown on some temporary pools, after five deaths in the past decade.

Coroner Heidi Wrigley's reviewed the death of 20-month-old Aromaia Duff in Napier in 2023, after being found face down in a backyard pool.

Wrigley says her death reaffirms concerns a pattern's emerging of drownings in such pools.

Acting Water Safety NZ CEO Gavin Walker told Heather du Plessis Allan that the issue isn't paddling pools - or much larger ones.

He says the problem is more with waist deep, medium-size pools about three metres across - which have proliferated.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yet another corridor has expressed concern over temporary backyard pools.
You know the ones I'm talking about. They've got a
frame you've got to put up, sit above the ground,
maybe one point two meters or something like that, and
you fill them up with water. Earlier this year, a
coroner said they should be banned, and now another has
said they're a grave hazard after the drowning of a
twenty month old girl in Napier. Gavin Walker is the
acting CEO at Water Safety New Zealand and with us

(00:20):
Hey Gavin.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, Dan, how are you here?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I'm well think you do you think we need to
ban them?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Look Outamaia's test is a reminder that unfenced pools left
towards water in people's backyard can be tempresent a real change,
a challenge to young kids. And we we're not talking
about the small ones. There's small paddling pools that we've
we've all had. You can easily grab those out, fill

(00:50):
them up, you spend time with your kids and you
turn them upside down and give them at the end
and you just raised. We're not talking about about the
ones that are much bigger, kind of one point two
meters or greater because kids can't climb young kids can't
climb into that, so they can't get into them supervised.
But there's been a real proliferation of cheaper options between

(01:14):
those two. Some of them take half a day to fill.
They're kind of three point six meters across, and they're
way steep, and we don't think the law in New
Zealand says if you buy one of these things for
a couple of hundred dollars from wherever, from team or
of the warehouse or others, it says you should get
in touch with the council and put a compliant full

(01:36):
fence in place because the risk is the same as
a permanent pul. But we just don't think anybody is
doing that. And so as we see more and more
of these things in people's backyards, we're already starting to
see increasing deaths of young children. And we've learnt these
hard lessons before. In New Zealand, we made the bold

(01:57):
call in the eighties offench our swimming pools and we
basically eliminated kids drowning in our backyard pools, and we're
seeing that coming back again.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
So why are we seeing so many of these things?
Is it simply because they are so much cheaper now
that you've got the tea moves and so on.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, that when the law was developed around fencing of
swimming pools, the kind of plaster portable pool product didn't exist.
And it's really only over the last ten years, really
the last five years, that this stuff's become really prevalent
and on the market. And I get it. We've got
young kids. Parent and grandparents are buying these things for

(02:36):
the best intentions, but if you leave them unfenced in
your backyard, something can easily happen for young children. And
we're just asking people to think. We're certainly asking government
to go why do we have to have these things
available in New Zealand. There's lots of other options bigger pools,

(02:56):
smaller pools, slip and slides, take your kids to the
beach or river. And in the absence of that, we're
asking parents, grandparents and others to think through these purchases. Okay,
if you don't think you can fence them, don't buy them.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Gavin, thank you, it's some sage advice appreciator. Gavin Walker,
acting CEO at Water Safety New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
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