Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the government response on the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee report into the performance of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. As some of you have perhaps noticed, I've taken a strong interest in this issue from my time on that committee. Even though I'm not on that committee anymore, I continue to be very interested in this issue. Obviously what spurred that inquiry was a particular tragic set of events in Western Australia. It goes back a while now, and I won't go over those events again; they have been well ventilated in this place and in other forums. However, those events have been the trigger for a significant report by the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee into AMSA. In May of this year the Australian government tabled its response to those recommendations. I want to speak very briefly to that response and to the process.

Part of AMSA's role is to regulate commercial shipping, and part of the recommendations that came out of that report was a review of the regulations surrounding commercial shipping within Australian waters. Obviously this relates to both recreational vessels, such as the one in which the tragic events took place, and the regulation of the way passengers are counted on and off vessels and making sure that, at very possible opportunity, when an accident does occur, everybody gets home. So that's very important.

I was recently down in Esperance, in the far south of Western Australia, with my colleague Senator Small, and we spoke to an operator of a small fishing vessel who highlighted another potential issue. I wish to raise it here, because one of those recommendations was a thorough-going review of the law, the associated legislative instruments and marine orders. The issue that came up was that the certification of safety management systems, particularly for our smaller commercial marine operators, is proving both difficult and expensive and is often extremely unclear in terms of the way the law needs to be complied with.

As it was described to us, a small commercial shipping vessel—a shipping vessel in this case—has to produce a safety management system. Often the owners and operators of those vessels don't necessarily have the technical skills to produce such management systems. Though they can obviously comply with them and implement them, they don't necessarily have expertise in drafting them. So they often will outsource this work to consultants, experts in the field. The trouble is that that is a costly exercise and then those documents are submitted to AMSA. As it was described to me, there is not necessarily any rhyme, reason or explanation as to which marine safety management system will be approved and which will be rejected.

So operators, particularly smaller operators, are put in an absolutely invidious position where they are submitting very expensive documentation to a regulator and they are not getting clarity or feedback on whether that marine safety management system is going to be acceptable to AMSA or not in advance. Obviously that makes it very difficult for them in terms of cost, time and keeping their boats on the water. As small businesses trying to operate in a very changeable and potentially costly market, that is a very difficult environment in which to work. I will obviously be communicating this concern directly to the minister. But I think it is important, as we go through this thorough-going review of the legislation, legislative instruments and marine orders in this area, that we consider all these kinds of problems that currently exist in the system and address as many of them as we possibly can.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.