A central Queensland coroner has delivered the findings on the inquest of a nine-year-old boy who drowned while swimming at the Rock Pool Water Park in Rockhampton in January 2007.
Coroner Annette Hennessey delivered her findings on the inquest into the drowning of the boy at the water park.
She has recommended improved safety and supervision measures to reduce the risk at public swimming pools.
The coroner said the boy appears to have fallen from a 20-metre-long inflatable toy and was found unconscious on the bottom of the pool.
She said there was inadequate supervision by adult carers and pool staff.
The pool operators were fined after a workplace health and safety prosecution in 2008.
Coroner Hennessey recommended an awareness campaign and updated staffing guidelines to improve supervision.
She also called for improvements of risk management in the use of inflatable toys.
The boy's mother says she hopes the inquest findings drive home the importance of supervision.
"School holidays approaching - how many parents work, do they know where their kids are?" she said.
"If it's a nice hot day, where are they going to go - swimming pool."
And the boy's father says lifesavers at swimming pools need to have proper training and qualifications.
"They might know it in the head kind of thing, they don't know it in theory they haven't tried it, they haven't got the training for it," he said.
"Every lifeguard should have the training for it, if you're there to watch children in swimming pools that's you're job.
"You're not allowed to use a forklift to load a truck on a worksite unless you've got a forklift ticket, it's the same thing.
"They're watching kids in the pool, they should have their bronze medallion, they should have every qualification that they can get."
Tags: disasters-and-accidents, emergency-incidents, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, australia, qld, rockhampton-4700
Reported by ABC News: First posted Thu Jun 24, 2010 12:21pm AEST
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