Super City spells end to free pools, says Olympian

John Walker

Thousands of children will lose free access to Manukau swimming pools under the Super City scheme, Olympic gold medallist John Walker says.

Since 1974, Manukau City Council has provided free public access to all pools, putting up to $7 million of ratepayers' money towards running the facilities each year.

But all that will go - with the chance to learn how to swim for free - once the one-Auckland city scheme is implemented, Mr Walker says.

"They would be obsolete. Manukau is the only city in the country - probably the whole world - that has free swimming pools.

"I don't know what's going to happen to the Super City, but free swimming pools for the whole of Auckland? Probably not."

Mr Walker, who last year started the John Walker Find Your Field of Dreams project, says one of Manukau's main priorities is to make facilities and activities accessible to youth. Free swimming lessons for all Year 3 and 4 pupils, after-school programmes and recreational activity-sport days at local parks, are some of the ways the city is getting youth involved.

"Manukau is different because the population is very young," Mr Walker said.

"It's always been our priority and responsibility to have free swimming pools, libraries, recreation centres and parks, because it's giving them something to do - take it away and they're on the streets, bored and [with] nothing to do - leading to trouble."

He said it was disappointing that the Super City scheme would mean Manukau City would lose some of its greatest assets, and would stop other major projects from happening - things that many people had worked hard on for years.

Manukau City mayor Len Brown says he will fight for the free swimming pools policy to stay, having been something the city was very proud of for the past 35 years.

"We're going to town on this one. It'll be a hell of a political fight," he says.

"It was always the great risk in this debate and it was one of the reasons why Manukau fought so hard against the Super City."

Mr Brown said expanding the policy to all parts of Auckland would be the better solution, rather than getting rid of a policy which specifically helped thousands of families in Manukau and in the wider Auckland region.

Mr Brown said: "This is part of Manukau's philosophy - putting families and kids first - free swimming pools was basically to ensure that all our kids could access pools at any time and learn how to swim."