Why Queensland has pool fence laws

Queensland has pool fence laws because young children drown in home pools. The Queensland Family and Child Commission reports that 10 children and young people drowned in Queensland in 2024-25, 6 of them in swimming pools, and that over the last five years private pools were the most common place, with all of those at homes. Where it looked at the fences, they did not meet the requirements in 10 of 12 private pool drownings of children aged 1 to 4. A fence helps only while it is in order and the gate is shut, and the Commission says supervision is still needed.Source: Queensland Family and Child Commission, Deaths of children and young people Queensland 2024-25, chapter 4 Drowning (report dated 31 October 2025), read 5 Nov 2026.

What the Commission found in 2024-25

• Ten children and young people died by drowning in Queensland in 2024-25: 6 in swimming pools and 4 in other places.
• Over the last five years, 50 children drowned. Private pools were the most common place, at 36% (18 children), and all 18 were at homes, townhouses or units. Baths were next, at 26% (13 children).
• Children under 5 were the largest group in 2024-25, at 50% of the deaths.
• Of 24 children aged 1 to 4 who drowned over the five years, 12 were in private pools. Seven of those 12 were at the child's usual home, and 5 at the home of a relative, friend or neighbour.

What was found about the fences

For those 12 private pool incidents, the Commission says the pool fencing did not meet the requirements in 10. It counts the absence of a fence, a defect in a fence or gate, and a gate propped open. A gate was propped open in 6 of the 12, and in one there was no pool fence.

The Commission's earlier paper looked at every fatal drowning of a child aged 0 to 4 in a regulated Queensland pool from 2011 to 2021, 40 children in all, with a further 853 treated after a non-fatal incident. It found:

• Fencing did not meet the requirements in 36 of the 40 fatal incidents (90%): in 4 there was no required fence, and in 32 there were defects.
• The defects found most often were gates that did not self-latch (20 incidents), objects in the non-climbable zone (16) and gates that did not self-close (15). A single incident could have more than one.
• Where a fence was present, the gate or fence had been left or propped open in 20 of 35 incidents. In 11 of those 20 the gate had been deliberately propped open, and in 6 it was open because it was in disrepair.
• In 11 of the 32 incidents with a defective fence, a current pool safety certificate was in place. The paper says defects can build up over time if a fence is not maintained, though in a small number of cases they may have been there when the inspection was done.
• Supervision of the child was considered inadequate for the circumstances in 65% of the fatal incidents.

Since the laws began

The Commission's 2024-25 report gives the average number of deaths a year of children aged 0 to 4 in Queensland private pools as 12 in 1986 to 1989, 8.6 in the 1990s, 5.6 in the 2000s, 4 in the 2010s and 2.5 in the 2020s so far. It says this happened while pool ownership was expected to rise, and that it is evidence that introducing and strengthening fencing rules limited young children's access to private pools. A 2015 answer by the Minister to Parliament said that before the pool safety laws of December 2010 drowning was the leading cause of death of children under five in Queensland, and that this was no longer the case. For the history of the rules themselves, see older pools and today's standard.

What these numbers do not show

• They count children who died. They do not count fences that were inspected, so they cannot say how many pools in general need work.
• Each number is for the period and age group the Commission names. We have not added them together or compared them with other states.
• Royal Life Saving publishes a National Drowning Report each year, using Queensland data from the Commission. Its website returned a 403 error when we tried to open the 2025 report on 5 November 2026, so we do not quote its figures.

What this means for a pool owner

The Commission's own summary is that the effect of fencing rules depends on consistent upkeep, in particular that gates are securely closed and never propped open, and that no physical barrier replaces an adult watching. Our guide on common pool fence problems lists what to look at, and the pool owner responsibilities page says what the law asks of an owner. A CPR course is a separate step that many owners take.

How this page was made: the PoolPreCert team read each page listed under Sources on 5 November 2026 and wrote this in plain words. The dates beside each source are the dates those pages show. PoolPreCert is not part of QBCC or the Queensland Government, and only a licensed pool safety inspector decides whether a pool meets the standard.