[Kharon]

Of Responsibility, accountability and ownership.

I am quiet genuinely puzzled; being a new 'interested party' in this saga of the Sydney harbour ferries. There is, it seems at first run through, a maze of disconnects between the parties involved; which makes it difficult to nail down the ultimate respondent to any claim made by the family of anyone unfortunate enough to have been harmed in an event such as a collision with Fort Dennison.




Perhaps it is time for AMSA to weigh in – but can they? What about the insurers can they declare that the risk outweighs the premium? Who pays that insurance and to whom? Who, in reality actually owns these ships? Who collects the revenue and how is that divided? Then the really curly questions pop up – maintenance – scheduled, routine and incidental? Who certifies rectification and repair? Who signs a vessel back to service. There is a long list of questions shrouding this saga; answers to which cannot be found in publicly available documents. The 'arrangements' should all be clearly defined, documented and available to the public without needing a FOI request or involve a twelve month letter writing campaign to a dead end automatic response generating system; try finding out just who Transdev are – good luck with that.

Then, try and work out what OTSI are doing about a clearly defined repetitive failure event of a critical system failure; to wit, the bloody steering system. When the lives of the travelling public are potentially at risk – then every, and I do mean every little thing which could affect their journey must be clearly visible. Welding; hull strength; steering; sea worthiness at Lloyd's register standard.

Officials who cannot answer straight questions with direct answers; are OTSI staff being gagged because no-one has gone public? Contract back alleys and lots of duck shoving is not what the public pays for or signed up to. Nowhere near good enough is it? Not by a long shot..

Shape up or ship out seems a fair call to me.

Toot – toot...