AMSA identifies FY 2022-23 compliance agenda

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has revealed its compliance agenda for the 2022-23 financial year after publishing its third consecutive National Compliance Plan.

Michael Drake, AMSA Executive Director of Operations, says the regulator’s intelligence-led and risk-based approach to compliance identified focus areas for the forthcoming year.

“Our regulated community is vast and our resources are finite, Mr Drake says. “By using marine incident and inspection data, we can identify emerging risks to safety and focus our compliance efforts where they are most needed.

“This approach has proven to be effective in previous years and we continue to refine it with each iteration of our National Compliance Plan.”

AMSA’s regulatory community includes foreign and regulated Australian vessels, as well as domestic commercial vessels spanning everything from solo bait fishing operations on remote Queensland beaches, all the way up to 300-metre container ships on global routes.

Mr Drake says compliance focus areas for foreign and regulated Australian vessels include planned maintenance and fire safety around cargo operations, among other areas identified in the plan.

“Nearly three quarters of all marine incidents from the last three years can be linked to failures in planned maintenance. Meanwhile nearly 14 per cent of all detainable deficiencies identified during port State control inspections last year related to fire safety.

“Looking closer to home at our domestic commercial vessel fleet, we’ve seen inadequate risk assessments as a contributory factor in around 30 per cent of marine incident investigations conducted by AMSA to-date.

“We’ve also scrutinised our domestic commercial vessel database and identified 1400 overdue periodic surveys. This will be another focus area of our compliance activities for 2022-23.”

Last year’s National Compliance Plan saw AMSA meet or exceeded most of its inspection targets for port and flag state control, including focused inspections on navigational safety, cargo securing and planned maintenance. AMSA inspected over 2,200 domestic commercial vessels, and conducted successful safety campaigns focusing on passenger safety, risk assessment on construction barges, marine incident reporting and fatigue.

AMSA publishes its National Compliance Plan in full on its website.