Roger Calkin with a photo of his late son, Sandy Calkin, who fell into Wellington Harbour and drowned in July 2021. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Roger Calkin with a photo of his late son, Sandy Calkin, who fell into Wellington Harbour and drowned in July 2021. Photo / Mark Mitchell
At least one person dies at Wellington’s waterfront roughly every two years, yet the city council has yet to commit to fully funding the necessary safety improvements it’s identified.
That evidence was given during an inquest hearing into the death of Sandy Calkin who failed to return homeafter a night out with friends in July 2021. His body was body was found in the harbour a week later and police have given evidence they believed he drowned.
The hearing, before Coroner Katharine Greig will determine how the 30-year-old died, whether there are adequate and appropriate safety measures in place at the waterfront and if sufficient steps have been taken to address public safety risks.
That included lighting the waterfront’s main thoroughfare from the railway station in the north to Herd St in the south and balustrades along parts of the waterfront, including where the East By West Ferry docks and where Calkin is believed to have fallen into the harbour.
It’s estimated it will take three years to complete the 3.5km stretch of safety improvements.
Yesterday the council’s waterfront and city parks manager Shane Binnie told the inquest the $6m had grown to more than $10m, although senior managers and elected councillors had yet to sign off the new figure.
Counsel assisting the coroner Josh Shaw asked Binnie if there was a danger of the council failing to execute the great plans for safety improvements at the waterfront that it had outlined to the inquest.
“We will have to go back to the council for approval of funding, that is a key milestone and priority for us,” Binnie said.
Reporting waterfront incidents
During the inquest the council has made much of its change in attitude and approach to reporting waterfront incidents since Calkin’s death.
Binnie told the inquest that if Calkin had died last month it would now be logged in the council’s system and investigated to determine any improvements or learnings that could be taken from it.
Counsel assisting the coroner Josh Shaw at the inquest into the death of Sandy Calkin. Photo / RNZ
Shaw asked Binnie about the council’s response to Isaac Levings’ death in 2023. The primary school teacher is believed to have drowned in Wellington Harbour after becoming separated from his friends.
Binnie told the inquest that as a manager he’d been involved in the investigation and recommended the temporary fencing remain, until a more permanent solution was found.
Asked what report had been prepared by the council following Levings’ death or whether it was more of an “ad hoc” process, Binnie said it was the latter because the council wasn’t directly involved or even contacted by the authorities.
Shaw also asked how a member of the public would draw the council’s attention to someone falling into the harbour. Binnie suggested they either call the council directly or log it on their website.
Taking the inquest to the council’s website, Shaw showed that reporting such an incident appeared to fall under the category “other” in a list of options that included “parking, street cleaning and water and drainage.”
Asked by Coroner Greig if the council now had the ability to track incidents on the waterfront to determine trends, Binnie said there was.
“The unfortunate thing is that a death, as far as I understand in my research and my findings... currently right this moment a death has occurred every 1.7 years on the waterfront and that’s not acceptable,” he said.
The inquest is scheduled to finish on Friday.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media adviser at the Ministry of Justice.
