Death by a thousand bureaucuts

For the maritime industry's commercial vessel market, we seem to have endless input from a variety of bureaucratic panels, who spend their lives confirming to all around that common sense isn't so common. While 90% of our marine accidents and deaths relate to recreational vessels, 90% of the regulations are focused on commercial vessels. Go figure!

45 years ago, in an effort to have all states under one uniform code, we adopted the USL (Uniform Shipping Code) and made the jump points of manning and equipment on a length matrix of 15, 20, 25, 35, 50 and 80 metres, together with a matrix of areas of operations from smooth waters (class E) to open waters (Class A), and another matrix of Passenger vessels Class 1, non-passenger class 2 and fishing vessel class 3. The USL threw away any reference to the already obsolete Gross Register Tonnage (GRT) and Net Register Tonnage (NRT) and the system worked well for 30 years. Mention a Class1C vessel and immediately everyone understood it was a restricted coastal passenger vessel.

The USL was so successful that it was adopted by NZ, PNG, FIJI and applauded by Denmark, UK, Israel and Holland as a very sensible and comprehensive code, when they were buying Australian commercial vessel designs.

That was until another team of bureaucrats from the fishing industry, decided that the fishing vessel benchmark length of 24 metres should be implemented in the manning limit for Class 5 Master. Why not 25 metres as there were so many 25 metre vessels around? DOH!

Despite a great safety record under the USL Code, the Federal Government, for no good reason at all other than keeping bureaucrats busy, decided to form the NMSC, (National Maritime Safety Committee) and create the NSCV (National Standards for Commercial Vessels) gabfest committees to update the USL code and in simple examples of stupidity and over-prescriptiveness, we ended up with a document 4 times the size of the USL, including 11 pages of definitions on "length" and 130 pages of fire safety. This would delight any lawyer involved in maritime disputes, not only could they use this conflicting information to suit their client, they could also spend thousands of billable hours trying to understand it themselves. To complicate things even more, they decided to adopt a second set of regulators by forcing vessels over 35 metres to be under Classification Societies such as Lloyds Register, DNV and ABS.

Queensland, the state with the highest number of commercial vessels at the time (9,333 being a significant 33% of the national total) ran efficiently with a government team of 23, and a statewide number of accredited private surveyors and plan approval naval architects, (including the team I was working with). Despite our loud protests against changing a good and safe system, we were outgunned by the six other Labor controlled states who didn't understand the ramifications of complicating our rules and increasing plan approval fees and survey fees by UP TO 20 TIMES!. This appears to be a standard Labor strategy of building bureaucracies, a good voting base.

I refer you to the article "Touched By Class" in Ausmarine magazine in May 2010, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Now we have the Canberra based AMSA, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority with 480 staff looking after the nation's 36,000 commercial vessels, roughly five times the number of bureaucrats needed before the change. I would estimate 90% of them have never been on or near a ship.

Because most of the commercial vessel activity still is in Queensland, the quick answer to cutting AMSA numbers is to find three talking frogs and a large AI centre somewhere near the centre of action, say the Whitsundays.

I am highlighting just two examples here that I do know a bit about, but my colleagues in other industries tell me about the same regulatory and financial strangulation of their endeavours, by burgeoning bureaucracies, together with ever expanding regulations, and the ever-increasing fees for such dismal service.

With a Labor Government industrial relations passion for higher wages, working from home, sick days used to the max, preferably Mondays and Fridays, and a less than optimal attitude, is it any wonder our bureaucracies are out of control, and need to be greatly downsized?

Has anyone noticed that the increase in small and medium businesses deaths, ie going broke, is directly proportional to the expanding number of bureaucrats employed nationally?