Shipping Australia was pleased to host Mr Mick Kinley, CEO of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, at a recent meeting of members.
Mr Kinley gave a wide ranging talk / presentation on numerous important maritime safety matters in Australia today.
Observing that funding for seafarer welfare is an issue, he noted that welfare bodies are carrying out tasks, such as arranging crew trips to the doctor, that could be done by commercial service providers such as ship agents. He also discussed the issues of underpayments of seafarers and noted that AMSA will “red card” ships where there has been systemic underpayment of crew.
Mr Kinley also discussed the National Plan for Marine Emergencies, which is reviewed every ten years. Shipping Australia has taken part in the consultation on this review. The review was last done in 2012 and there are lots of changes in this review. This National Plan was formerly focused on pollution response, however, with industry changes – such as new fuels (which are potentially much more dangerous), ships getting bigger, cargo changing, a new port-landscape (more private port operators), AMSA feels that Australia cannot rely on past experience in setting the next National Plan.
In relation to Port State Control, he raised the issue of major machinery failures, which has been higher than normal of late. Mr Kinley added that the power to ban ships from Australia has been used “a fair bit” of late.
However, the overall statistics are encouraging. In 2023, there were 6,066 individual ships eligible for Port State Control inspection and there were 2,477 inspections of those ships (a 40.8% inspection rate of eligible ships, about 11% up on the previous year) which led to 176 detentions.
Accordingly, there was only one detention for every 14 ships inspected; detentions as a percentage of total inspections stood at 6.3%.
Also discussed was the Domestic Commercial National Law Review and the Annual Compliance Plan. He also discussed the new EDCIS chart standard; decarbonisation; the Domestic Commercial Law Review; and the Annual National Compliance Plan, among many other topics.
Shipping Australia thanks Mr Kinley and the team at AMSA for their time and their presentation.
