Royal Life Saving South Australia

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:49): While I am sure nobody here today would question the importance of teaching young children how to swim and be safe around the water, the Marshall government has cancelled funding for the body whose very existence is to achieve those goals. The government has simply and inexplicably stopped funding to Royal Life Saving South Australia.

This is either a truly dangerous oversight or a shameful, calculated, economic decision. Why dangerous? Because young children learn to swim in swimming pools, almost at the exclusion of every other possible option, and the last thing we should be doing is cutting funding to the service that teaches water safety to children in swimming pools.

Children in their infancy do not and could not reasonably be expected to learn to swim among the waves, tides and rips of the ocean and other water bodies, such as rivers. I do not know of many people who did not learn to swim in a swimming pool with somebody watching over them every second of their lesson. That is where I learned to swim, and that is where I assume everyone else here today learnt.

The government has quite rightly allocated funding for the Surf Life Saving association, which has done a great job in this state since the first club was formed at Henley Beach 96 years ago. Since then, Surf Life Saving has been providing confidence and reassurance for beachgoers, and keeping swimmers safe on our beaches. We go to the beach knowing that, in the unlikely event we get into trouble and we are swimming between the flags, Surf Life Saving lifeguards will be there.

The Surf Life Saving association deserves all the government and community support it can get, but nobody believes this should be done at the expense of Royal Life Saving South Australia. Last year, there were a frightening and distressing 294 drowning deaths across Australia. From the coast to the rivers and swimming pools, the number was up 20 per cent on the previous year.

The 25 drowning deaths of infants aged up to four years was a staggering 109 per cent increase. Forget percentages, that is an additional 13 preschool children who drowned. Who in their right mind then would want to take away funding from a body that works to make children safer in the water and help reduce these terrible tragedies?

The services provided by Royal Life Saving South Australia are invaluable. They include education, training, health promotion, commercial and home pool inspections to guarantee safety or otherwise or advise on ways to improve it, patrol services for inland waterways and Inclusive Swim, a program which helps people of all abilities learn to swim at a level at which they are comfortable. It also supports Hills Swim School, a program based at Blackwood in which youngsters from surrounding Hills areas with limited access to pools and the beach are taught swimming and water safety skills.

As we strive to make the world safer in so many ways, the state government has, for reasons only it can explain, cut funding for an area of children's lives that can be most dangerous, but does not have to be with the right education. While Royal Life Saving South Australia is expected to pass the tin around to raise funds for its tireless work, the state government has taken the very strange step of choosing to close the Strathmont Centre pool.

This is a facility set within an expanding inner northern area where many children, including those with disabilities, have for a long time learnt to swim and be safe in the water. Yes, it needed upgrading, but the government took the short-sighted view that closure was a better option than fixing the facility at a cost of $300,000, in a residential area that has experienced massive growth over the past decade.

Certainly, the increased population would have patronised it, and the children would have needed it, but the suggestion at the time of the decision to close it was that they could travel elsewhere, perhaps to Tea Tree Gully, Payneham or North Adelaide, located between seven and 10 kilometres away. This is far too serious to be an either/or matter.

Every year, when governments have to balance the budget, the first thing they should consider is the safety and future of our children. The state government only needs to look at the harrowing drowning figures and then remember that every one of those numbers is a real person—often a child who should not have drowned.

Royal Life Saving SA is the peak organisation for inland water safety and drowning prevention. Over 37 sites across regional South Australia have now moved to the Royal Life Saving holiday swim to deliver an inland water safety program in their community. This is now over 3,000 enrolments that have been made across these sites that Royal Life Saving has had to fund itself.

I call on the state government to take a long look at their budget and to find some funding for Royal Life Saving SA, so that they do not have to go around shaking a tin for donations and can get on with the job of teaching our children water safety and ultimately helping save lives.