Water Safety

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (15:46): Yesterday, 1 December, was National Water Safety Day. It is a day that is so necessary in Australia, in a country surrounded by water, with rivers and creeks running across it and some backyards that have swimming pools, from wading pools to above-ground pools and some in-ground pools. But what about public pools?

Over the past four years, I have highlighted the fact that closures and lack of swimming pool facilities in the north-east and in Torrens have resulted in members of our community missing out on swimming, missing out on water safety, missing out on water therapy for young and old and people with a disability, impacting also on our culturally and linguistically diverse families, many that have come from landlocked countries and have little or no swimming or Australian water safety knowledge.

My letters to the Premier and to the various government ministers have apparently fallen on deaf ears. Last parliamentary sitting, I called on the government to actively pursue the building of a public swimming pool on the new Oakden development site, or nearby, in partnership with the City of Port Adelaide Enfield and the federal government.

With the permanent closure of the Strathmont swimming pool by the government, the minister in the other house said that there would be places for people to have swimming lessons. So what did they do? Swimming lessons were taking place at the Hampstead swimming pool. That is now closed off. The Modbury pool, which was the rehabilitation pool next to Modbury Hospital, which was built when we were in government, a Labor government, was opened up and swimming lessons were taking place there. But of course now that is closed off.

The Royal Society for the Blind, closed their swimming pool in March last year due to COVID, and it has not reopened. Last week, the announcement was made of the imminent closure of very small pool but one that was well used, the School of Little Swimmers. So there now are many thousands of locals no longer able to access a pool. This does not include those who are looking for a swimming pool to access for the first time.

I have tabled a petition in the parliament on this issue because I know Torrens and the surrounding suburbs have significant new arrivals from landlocked countries, and swimming and water safety lessons are a must. But there is not the availability of a pool within a reasonable distance to accommodate anywhere near the demand, not for our local primary schools, not for children with special needs, not for new migrants to South Australia or the local area. Tragically, this was highlighted only last week by the drowning of a young child with a disability and I know last summer, a student from Pinnacle College.

Between July 2020 and June 2021, despite COVID-19 there was an increase in drowning deaths across Australia—294—an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year. Royal Life Saving Society Australia CEO, Justin Scarr, said children were at increased risk of drowning over summer and they required constant supervision around swimming pools and inland waterways. He said that simple actions to help make water safety a priority on National Water Safety Day include enrolling children in swimming lessons. You cannot enrol children in swimming lessons if there are no swimming pools. That is a problem that is currently being faced. I know that Royal Lifesaving and other swimming providers are having that issue as we speak. There are no swimming pools.

Enrolling children in swimming lessons sounds really simple but it is not in Torrens, and it is not in the north-eastern suburbs because there are no pools, and if you try to get a vacancy, it is very difficult. To have a class, and to have a vacancy for a class of students or people who want to take swimming lessons, is virtually impossible.

How is it that we are having such difficulty? This government needs to change. It needs to become serious about what it is delivering in this field. It is a safety issue, it is an issue for our new migrants, it is an issue for children with special needs, it is an equality issue and it is something that needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed now. The government can do this, they can commit funding to a new swimming pool in the Torrens area on the site of the new Oakland development.