Legislation not the answer for water safety - Maritime NZ

The entrance to The Waterways in Pauanui. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Education not legislation is the answer to improve safety on the water, Maritime New Zealand safety inspector Jim Lilley says.

The comment comes following a suggestion by Pauanui-Tairua harbourmaster Wayne Price that boaties should need to be licensed in the wake of two incidents over the weekend.

A 13-year-old and an 11-year-old were injured after their outboard motor-powered inflatable was rammed by a jetski driven by a 16-year-old at 7pm on Friday. The following day 17-year-old Bishop Thompson was run over by a jetski after falling off his jetski on Lake Okareka near Rotorua. The boy was not wearing a lifejacket and is still missing, presumed dead.

Mr Lilley said a 2007 Review of the New Zealand Pleasure Boat Safety Strategy looked into the fatality record of countries with licensing systems (which includes Canada, four Australian states and some European countries) before and after the legislation was enacted.

"There was no noticeable difference in any of the examples we looked at," Mr Lilley said.

"We believe education is better than legislation.

"In the research we did on other countries, we concurrently looked are countries using an education model. Education won over legislation hands down."

Mr Lilley said licensing would require a bureaucracy to administer the system, placing further costs on boaties who in some regions must register their boats and pay for boat-trailer parking.

"We've all seen the reaction from motorcyclists when registrations went up last year. I think we'd have the same backlash from boaties."

Mr Lilley said around 16,000 new vessels enter the country each year, so there would be a similar number of new boaties getting into the pastime.

But they have no excuse for not knowing the rules of the water, as Maritime New Zealand and other the National Pleasure Boat Forum provide free safety information and advice.

Boaties can request a free safe boating pack through the Maritime NZ website, Mr Lilley said, which includes a DVD containing boating rules and safety tips, as well as region specific advise for people setting off for different parts of the country.

Mr Lilley said boaties had no excuse for not knowing the rules on the water.

"Ignorance of the law is not an excuse or a defence."