Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to speak on this motion today, and I thank the member for Kingsford Smith for bringing this to the parliament. The member and I are co-chairs of the Parliamentary Friends of Surf Life Saving, and we work together in a bipartisan way to celebrate the achievements of surf lifesaving and to support the wonderful work that surf lifesavers do right around the country. And it is very significant: in any year there are some 12,000 rescues and some 32,000 first aid treatments on beaches all around the country. I really do want to commend Surf Life Saving Australia, all of the state bodies and the 12 wonderful surf lifesaving clubs in my electorate who work so, so hard to keep our beaches safe and also to look after the thousands of tourists who come on to the beaches every summer. As the member for Kingsford Smith has mentioned, it is really quite tragic to see the number of drownings over this summer: 69 people have lost their lives and, as we all know, one drowning is too many.

In my electorate of Corangamite, three people lost their lives very tragically. A young man, Winchelsea father Mark Jordan-Hill, lost his life when he came off his kayak at Whites Beach at Torquay. There was a man in his 70s who also died at Torquay surf beach just a day later, and then a missing 60-year-old male scuba diver was found some weeks later at Lonsdale Wall, Port Phillip Heads.

As I mentioned, these drownings should not occur, and I do support the member's motion with respect to increasing water safety and water education. But it remains the case that the federal government is doing an enormous amount to support all of the key peak organisations that make up the Australian Water Safety Council and to support this report, the Australian water safety strategy 2016-2020, which underpins a lot of that work. Every year the federal government provides $11 million to these organisations, which supports them to do the great work that they do. The government is also providing $8 million under the Beach Safety Equipment Fund to support the wonderful work of surf lifesaving clubs right around Australia.

While the member has raised a number of very good points, this is very much in the domain of the states. Whether it is swimming classes in schools, swimming instruction, beach safety, water safety education or even signage—converting some signs into foreign languages—these are most often the domain of the states, because the states have sole jurisdiction in relation to schools, or in many respects the domain of local councils. At a Commonwealth level we are absolutely supporting this strategy, which is very important, but we do want to see greater consistency between the states to make sure that every single child has that fundamental education. It is unacceptable that a child can reach the age of secondary school, in year 7, and be struggling to swim. I have just raised this issue with my son's school, as I believe that every single child must learn to swim. Some schools do it very well and others do not.

I commend this report to anyone; it is a wonderful strategy. In this report there are drowning prevention pillars which basically summarise the ways in which we can work hard as a nation to reduce the drownings. Certainly the Australian Commonwealth government supports the aspiration that we must see a 50 per cent cut, at the very least, in the number of drownings. Really, we need to see no drownings, but we absolutely must see a dramatic cut.

Then there are things like safe venues.

I know that in my own region of Corangamite there has been a huge controversy over funding a local swimming pool on the Surf Coast because there is no proper swimming pool in Torquay, where, as I have mentioned, there were some terrible tragedies over this summer. We need to see greater action from councils to make sure that we have safe venues to learn to swim, that we have the workforce, that we have the policies and that we also have the education. Policies go down to issues such as swimming pool legislation to make sure proper regulations are in place in relation to issues such as swimming pool fences at home, because we know that many young children die at home. It has been my pleasure to speak on this motion. (Time expired)

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