This annual incident summary consolidates and considers marine incident reports across the spectrum of domestic and international commercial operations. It presents a snapshot of the vessels that regularly operate in, or visit, Australian waters.
This will assist AMSA to develop a more complete picture of the maritime industry to identify trends in safety, identify areas for research and recommend safety compliance actions.
In 2021 it was encouraging to see the increased incident reporting from the DCV sector, but this is not consistent across all types of vessels and operations. AMSA continues to work in partnership with industry on the challenge of fostering a reporting culture to improve safety outcomes for the DCV fleet.
Whilst incident reports provide the frequency and nature of marine incidents, we also need to identify underlying safety issues - not just what went wrong, but why and how it went wrong, and how we can prevent recurrence. Through use of a safety framework to better understand what drives human behaviour and performance we support our risk-based approach in the identification of focus areas of concern. By doing so we can prioritise our compliance approach and design compliance initiatives to ensure we allocate our resources relative to the outcomes we aim to achieve.
The information in this report, in conjunction with the Port State Control Annual Report and Maritime Labour Convention Annual Report, formed the basis of the 2022-2023 National Compliance Plan. Focus areas in the National Compliance Plan which have been informed by incident data include:
- Safety Management Systems (Risk Assessment): AMSA will conduct a safety compliance campaign which will include education and focused inspections on risk assessment, targeting Class 2 (non-passenger vessel) operations in port limits, including towage and vessel transfer operations.
- Safety Management Systems (onboard familiarisation): AMSA will develop and conduct an education campaign focusing on the obligations of vessel owners to ensure that all personnel are qualified and properly inducted and trained in the operation of the vessel before assuming duties.
- Fire Safety: AMSA will develop and publish a safety bulletin in 2022/23 on fire safety with a focus on adapting fire prevention and firefighting practices to cargo being carried on-board.