THE AUSTRALIAN Maritime Safety Bureau, over 2022, inspected 2671 domestic commercial vessels, 2405 foreign-flagged vessels and 95 regulated Australian vessels, according to its first State of the Fleet overview.
Last year, reported incidents included 1054 involving domestic commercial vessels, 3837 involving foreign-flagged vessels and 268 involving regulated Australian vessels.
And AMSA received and followed up 261 Maritime Labor Convention complaints in 2022.
The report outlines AMSA’s regulatory interactions with the people and vessels that worked in Australian waters in 2022, and foreshadows forthcoming compliance priority areas.
The authority is responsible for regulating safety on domestic commercial vessels, regulated Australian vessels, and foreign-flagged vessels operating to and from Australian ports, and through Australian waters.
AMSA Executive Director Operations Michael Drake said the authority’s regulated communities are diverse from one another, but also within themselves.
“Safety is important regardless of whether you operate a three-metre tinny for commercial crabbing, or a 200-metre bulk carrier,” Mr Drake said.
“Despite the differences in vessels and operations, and the challenges that regulating safety on each of them presents, we have identified a number of issues and areas of concern that apply to the full range of vessels under our responsibility.”
Mr Drake said AMSA’s inspection and incident analysis shows planned maintenance, voyage planning and lookout, working conditions and safety behaviours, electrical safety and vessel-sourced pollution continue to be issues across these diverse regulated communities.
“We are a modern, data-driven regulator so we will use these insights to refine where and how we apply our finite compliance resources for the year to come,” he said.
