Santa and his entourage have been told they must wear seatbelts if they come to Christchurch, raising accusations of “woke nonsense”.
Some city councillors said they were outraged at the new safety instructions laid down for Santa and his little helpers, who are taking part in the Christchurch’s Christmas Show Parade on Sunday.
The annual parade, at Canterbury Agricultural Park, is due to kick off at 2pm, and for the first time organisers have said those on floats are required to wear seatbelts.
A health and safety audit of the parade recommended them after identifying fall risks, and more than 20 seatbelts and 30 safety bars had been installed.
Councillor Aaron Keown said seatbelts made sense for those on floats high off the ground, but it was a health and safety over-reach to require them on low, slow-moving floats.
“I haven’t seen it before. Now, on some of the really large floats, where someone could have a particularly high risk of a fall or something, absolutely that makes sense that you’d do that.
“But if a float’s two foot off the ground and you’re doing three kilometres an hour, I don’t think the risk is overly high – you don’t have to have a seatbelt in your go-kart at home.”
Councillor Tim Scandrett also voiced his frustration with the changes.
“The irony is we can put buses on for people to get there, and there are no seatbelts on the buses, but for some strange reason you’ve got to now have seatbelts on floats.”
Scandrett said he had been involved in the parade for many years and said floats would not be “going more than 5km – if you were lucky”.
Christchurch parade director Jason Reekers defended the new measures, saying the buck stopped with him if an accident were to happen, and it would be unwise to ignore recommendations.
“These floats are 30, 40, 50 years old, and we’ve never had any problem and never had anybody fall off.
“But I also realise that today’s a different world, everybody’s … looking for a head to roll if there’s an accident, and I don’t want it to be my head. So I’m going to comply with anything that I’m given.”
Reekers said he was grateful to the Canterbury companies who had donated the safety equipment, which was worth an estimated $5000.
Seatbelt requirement for Christmas parades vary throughout the country.
Upper Hutt Mayor Wayne Guppy said as far as he knew, there would be no seatbelts on floats in his city’s Santa Parade on December 1. Safety just required a bit of common sense, he said.
“Why are they killing the parade? We certainly know how to ruin fun.”
Meanwhile, Auckland’s Farmers Santa Parade, which returns for its 91st run tomorrow, would feature a mix of seatbelts and safety bars.
General manager Pam Glaser said while there was no obligation, there would be some seatbelts for “little kids in certain locations”, and appropriate support elsewhere.
