Children and young teens across the country will need to wear life jackets while they’re on small boats, if a National MP’s member’s bill is passed.
Upper Harbour MP Cameron Brewer’s Life Jackets for Children and Young Persons Bill would make life jacket-wearing mandatory for those under the age of 15 on recreational craft less than six metres long.
“We know that when you put a life jacket on a child, it increases their chances of survival tenfold,” he told Q+A.
“So this is about protecting our kids in the water and doing the right thing.”
Water Safety New Zealand’s 2024 report said 18 people died in drownings that involved boats. Of that number, 17 were not wearing life jackets.
“In New Zealand, we’ve successfully changed the culture around wearing a seat belt, around wearing a cycle helmet. So now if you see a group of kids tearing down the road without cycle helmets on, you immediately think that’s not right,” Brewer said.
“That’s what we want to do with life jackets.”
Councils around New Zealand currently had different rules about life jackets, which meant there was “too much inconsistency”, he said.
In some places, such as Auckland, skippers of small boats could choose when people onboard should wear life jackets, after considering conditions in the water. If a skipper deemed it safe, Auckland’s bylaws only required that sufficient numbers of life jackets were available on a boat, in an easily accessible place.
In other councils like Canterbury, life jackets must be worn at all times on vessels 6m or less in length.
Brewer’s member’s bill aimed to set a national minimum standard through changing the Maritime Rules.
The bill had been in the member’s bill ballot for about a decade, shepherded by former National MP Alfred Ngaro and now-Cabinet Minister Simon Watts. It was drawn from the biscuit tin in April and was awaiting its first reading.
Why only under 15s?
In 2018, Ngaro advocated for the bill in an oral question to then-Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter.
Genter said Ngaro should consider targeting compulsory life jacket-wearing for males over the age of 40, given they were overrepresented in boat-related drowning incidents. She said no recreational boater under 18 had died in 2016, 2017, or 2018.
Water Safety New Zealand’s 2024 report said more than half of all boat-related drownings over the past 10 years involved people over 55. The 10-year average for boat-related fatalities for under 15s is below one, but the report noted more people aged 25-54 and over 75 had died in boat-related incidents in 2024 compared to previous years.
Brewer said nearly 20 young people have died in preventative deaths by not wearing life jackets on small boats or craft in New Zealand since 2000.
“There are enough young people affected and who have lost their lives for this bill to make a real difference,” he said.
“We’re putting it to under 15-year-olds as a start. We may get submissions [in select committee] where people are calling for mandatory life jackets for everyone on small boats.
“That’s not where I’m at at the moment. But we do think that children need to be protected.”
Brewer said he supported skipper discretion, “but we want them to have discretion over adults”.
“Maritime New Zealand tells me that when they’ve surveyed New Zealanders, 90% of Kiwis want life jackets mandatory for children, and most Kiwis actually think they already are.
“So this is not only reflecting what’s right, this is reflecting the will of the people.”
As for how the law change could be enforced, the MP did not expect it would be “zealously enforced, over-enforced”.
“[Maritime New Zealand] is not going to go out with an inspectorate throwing fines at everyone on day one where children might not be wearing life jackets.
“This will have a huge educational component to it where people will get warned, people will get encouraged and, if there’s recidivist offending, obviously there’s the ability to put infringements in at a local level.
“But we’re not going to be seeing much resistance to this.”
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
