Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Wellington Council doesn't need to fence off the sea

Rare thing to be able to say- but Wellington City Council has just made a sensible decision and voted against erecting a fence along the entire length of Kumutoto and Queen's Wharf.

Now, if you know the part of Wellington that I'm talking about here, it's the area seaside of the TSB Bank Arena and Fergs and Shed 5 and Foxglove and so on. 

That whole area at the moment has beautiful concrete walkways that have been laid, lovely seating and lighting and so on. 

And then there's a little barrier either side. If there's sea on the other side, there's a little barrier that comes up to a concrete barrier, maybe mid-shin for you.

Now, council officials planned to erect a fence instead - a full-length fence either side of every walkway, up to about 1.2 meters or so, lining almost the entire walkway, 3.5 km of it, at the cost of maybe as much as $30 million.

And they wanted the council - probably because they realized how this is going to go down with people - to rush through voting on it without talking to the public about it first.

For once, Wellington City Council has actually done the right thing and pumped the brakes here.

I think, to be fair to the officials, that this is coming from a good place and that this is the recommendation in a coroner's report.

A coroner has had a look at somebody who's fallen into the water, died in the drink, and said: you should put a fence up. Because there have been a few examples lately, especially young men who've got on the raz and then fallen into the water, and that has been the end of them.

But - this is gonna sound harsh - I don't think that you fence off an entire walkway because some young people sometimes have a drink and then fall in.

I don't want, just as much as you - I don't want people to die needlessly in accidents. But there is a balance to be struck here between personal responsibility and safety measures that we put up to stop stuff happening.

I think you go for an intermediate thing here. You stick up some lights, you make sure people can see where they're going in the dark, but you do not fence off the entire thing because that is overkill.

It is not normal for us to have fences between ourselves and the sea. Take Auckland, where I live at the moment. 

Go for a walk under Auckland's Harbour Bridge, there are huge stretches exactly like this. No fence whatsoever. You're just walking there and there's the sea. It's a fall down, you just have to look after yourself and be careful. 

Walk on piers anywhere in this country, they often do not have fences. You've just got to watch where you're going.

If you chuck up a fence, you stop people doing what they're supposed to do near the sea, which is sitting there looking at it, enjoying nature, or fishing off the walkway into the sea.

Think about what the Wellington officials were trying to do here - they were literally fencing off the sea.

When you fence off the sea, do you not think that you are going just a little bit too far?

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