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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-24 Daily Xml
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Community Swimming Pools

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:14): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services, the Hon. Michelle Lensink, about the future of community swimming pools.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: Last week, I received a call from a distressed constituent, Joanne Dalton, who runs the SwimSafe Swim School at the Strathmont Centre at Oakden, telling me that, as a result of an audit by SafeWork SA, the pool will be decommissioned and her lease would not be extended beyond 31 January 2019. Unless Mrs Dalton finds an alternative venue, it could mean the closure of her 40-year-old swim school, which employs 25 staff, provides water safety lessons to 700 children each week, and over the course of its history has taught many thousands of children vital survival skills.

As a matter of interest, in 2016-17, South Australia recorded 15 deaths by drowning (or 5 per cent of the Australian total). The pool is, of course, used by others in the community, including hydrotherapy programs for the elderly and disabled. My question to the minister is:

1. Considering the many people reliant on this facility, is the government going to assist them finding or providing an alternative, or consider a further extension to SwimSafe school to the end of term 1, 2019, which is 12 April, to enable Mrs Dalton to fulfil the school's commitments?

2. What other pools are to be decommissioned because of SafeWork SA audits?

3. Will the government release the audit compiled by Recreation SA on all swim centres around the state?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:16): I thank the honourable member for his question. In relation to any audits and those matters, I will have to take those particular questions on notice and refer them to one of my colleagues in another place for a response. I assume the honourable member is referring to the particular pool at Strathmont Centre, about which I also received correspondence from Mrs Dalton, and I thank her for her letter.

The Strathmont Centre, if honourable members are not aware, is a site located at Oakden, which is currently still known as the Strathmont Centre but is the former Intellectual Disability Services Council congregate accommodation service. There is now one individual still residing there, and steps are being taken to relocate him to more suitable accommodation, given that we no longer support (and have not supported for some decades) institutions as appropriate places for people with disabilities to be accommodated.

The pool has remained on site since and is not available to the public. However, it has been made available to organisations, including the one to which the honourable member has referred. My department advises me that any of the pool users have had short-term contracts, given the situation of Strathmont Centre being in the process of decommissioning, but also because the pool itself is ageing and is not suitable for use in the long term.

The letter I received referred to an audit that had been undertaken—that is correct, I agree with that—and some works were done, but additional works would be required to continue to make the pool usable into the future. My department has also undertaken to work with the existing users to try to find alternatives for them.

They were providing six-month contracts. They provided notice to all of the current users with more than six months' notice in order to facilitate that process, and I am sure they will continue to work with all of the users to assist them as this particular pool is not to be used in the long term.

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