[Peetwo]

AMSA loses the plot on Navigation...

Via YouTube:

CHAIR: Let's go to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. Welcome, and thank you very much. No opening statements.

Senator McDONALD: Mr Kinley, I'm sorry to go straight to the heart of this. We were short of time at the last estimates. This had been raised by a number of senators—there are some very concerning issues around the tender process. I have a couple of articles here that I want to table. Here we are at quarter to 11, and I'm deeply concerned about the safety of Australia's maritime industry and our shipping lines. We're investing in submarines, but the actual nuts and bolts of protecting ships through these processes has, I think, not been done to a good standard of the project. Minister Catherine King has referred the AMSA procurement process of the aids to navigation contract to the Auditor-General, Mr Grant Hehir. However, he has now resigned, so it has no oversight.

Chair, you'll remember the process we went through with AMSA with that terrible situation off the coast in Western Australia. It has not been an organisation that I've been culturally confident in, but what do we do? Here we are at five to 11, I'm very worried we're going to have deaths as a result of this very poorly managed process and, once again, the Senate's going to miss out on having any inquiry. Last time, we tried to bring AMSA back, and we said: 'No, no, don't worry. We're having another estimate in February.' But here we are with two minutes.

CHAIR: I can't apologise for—

Senator McDONALD: No, I'm not suggesting it's your fault, but I'm just saying: what do we do? This is the Senate's only opportunity to hold this organisation to account on something that could threaten the lives of maritime workers and of infrastructure—

Mr Kinley : Can I say something?

Senator McDONALD: No, I don't think we've got time, unfortunately.

Mr Kinley : I did lodge an opening statement with the committee—I'm hoping that's been tabled—which goes to these matters and the alarmist claims made by an unsuccessful tenderer for this process—

Senator McDONALD: That is, in a nutshell, the issue that we want to explore, and yet we are not going to get an opportunity to do this. If there are deaths as a result of this or loss of equipment—

Mr Kinley : There won't be deaths as a result of this. The network will be maintained to the same standards as it has been maintained to in the past.

Senator McDONALD: I don't think you can say that.

Mr Kinley : We are in the market again now for the services—

Senator McDONALD: Only one company tendered for this work because of the highly specific nature of the—

Mr Kinley : No, that's not correct. You are taking what they have said about the work. We have a lot of in-house expertise. We run major contracts in house as well as our maintenance contract—

Senator McDONALD: Running a contract is a very different issue to going out and running equipment that has been not managed by AMSA for 20 years.

Mr Kinley : There are around 480 aids to navigation in our network. There are thousands of aids to navigation around the country in ports run by states and other organisations, and we're confident with the revised approach to our market that we have made as of last Friday, when our first tranche of contracts went out.

Senator McDONALD: Thank you for raising last Friday, because I asked questions on notice after last estimates. They were due on 15 December. On Friday I received my response—eight weeks late—and nine of the same answers were just copied and were incomplete. The disrespect to the Senate and this process is extraordinary. Chair, I don't know how we resolve this but I am deeply dissatisfied with this.

CHAIR: I do, I know. What we have to do is manage our time, and, unfortunately, that hasn't happened. We have two days of this portfolio coming in May, and I urge our committee to be mindful as we are. We have people coming in to ask questions, and they can. We've run out of time. I share your frustration but, unfortunately, that was the—

Senator McDONALD: I'm going to ask for a spillover for this agency.

CHAIR: No. I will not be available. We can talk about this after.

Senator CANAVAN: We can talk about that later.

CHAIR: I don't want to waste any more time. We had an agreement this morning that was going perfectly, and the regular members of this committee—

Senator McDONALD: What I want to have on the record

Senator McKENZIE: There's no one here—

CHAIR: I said the regular members of this committee had a very good arrangement and, unfortunately, that has gone. We are wasting more of your time. We are not going to get to the other agencies.

Senator McDONALD: I want to say on the Hansard record that this is an issue that is too serious to be allowed to be left for another three months. I think the way that the agency has responded to the Senate, and this sort of response, is not good enough.

Senator McKENZIE: I might have a suggestion. I know we're going to discuss the spillover date offline, but maybe when we come back to a sitting week, we could find some time as a committee to have this particular agency—

CHAIR: There are plenty of things that are available to the committee, as we all know, and we'll talk about that. Mr Kinley, we'll be back in touch.

Mr Mick Kinley, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Maritime Safety Authority Opening Statement 12 February 2023:

Australian Maritime Safety Authority Opening Statement Additional Estimates 12 February 2024


At our previous appearance, the Committee had explored a procurement by AMSA for 2 distinct but
linked services of roughly equal value. Emergency towage capability, which attracted healthy
competition and has since proceeded to contract, and aids to navigation maintenance which has
since been put back to the market in a revised form.

The Committee wrote to me on 8 November 2023 regarding our previous appearance and
“concerns” raised by stakeholders and I responded on 17 November 2023 explaining why those
concerns were unfounded and incorrect.

Following our previous appearance, we also received 15 questions on notice on our approach to
market for services to maintain our aids to navigation.

I would like to provide some background for the Committee.

AMSA is responsible for around 480 maritime aids to navigation for coastal navigation (States and
Ports look after ports and internal waters where there are thousands more). Maritime aids to
navigation are exactly that; an aid to navigation. While ships primarily rely on electronic charts and
satellite positioning the lights, radar beacons and other daylight visual aids we provide are an
important means of verifying location and should global positioning systems fail would be critical
back up.

We rely on numerous contractors to maintain and operate our network. The same service provider
has delivered our lower-value planned maintenance and response to outages for over 20 years. The
model has been effective although performance of the contractor has not been without challenges –
particularly in recent years.

In planning early for the end of the current contract on 30 June 2024, AMSA undertook a request for
information process through AusTender in January 2022. Enough companies provided a response so
that we released the open tender in August 2022 for services from 1 July 2024 expecting healthy
competition.

We were surprised when only one tender for aids to navigation services was submitted. In
accordance with our procurement evaluation plan, the tender was assessed against the technical
requirements and on the information provided did not give AMSA confidence that the necessary
contract services would be delivered as required. The evaluation committee comprised three AMSA
employees with appropriate skills and experience who independently assessed the tender against
each criteria and were then brought together with the independent probity adviser to moderate and
agree on the overall scoring.

No Board member or Executive member was involved in the scoring. As you would expect, the
Executive had effective oversight of the procurement, and a full and detailed report was provided to
our Board.

Given this unexpected result considerable work has been undertaken to re-evaluate our approach to
this work and approach the market again to ensure these services will be provided into the future.

Reapproaching the market with the same model would most certainly bring a repeat result.

In development of the new model, an active risk register has been maintained along with treatments
of those risks and the AMSA Board has been kept appraised of the results of the approach to market
and revised approach.

Our key objective remains that the aids to navigation will be maintained to achieve levels of
availability specified by the International Association of Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse
Authorities of which AMSA is Australia’s national member and active contributor to their standards.

The first tranche of tenders – dividing the national task geographically and functionally – were
released on AusTender last week. Our detailed planning shows we will have contracts in place by 1
July 2024 with contingencies should there be delays.

The network is robust, maintenance intervals are 2 years for many sites and AMSA has in-house
skilled staff who manage an annual capital works program of similar value to the national
maintenance contractor for major overhauls or refurbishment of sites beyond minor maintenance
undertaken under the national contract.

The original approach to market composed two parts – aids to navigation maintenance and
emergency towage capability. The Emergency Towage Capability component was awarded in
December 2023 to Smit Lamnalco for an enhanced capability from the current 82 tonne bollard pull
vessel to a 100 tonne bollard pull vessel from 1 July 2024 while a purpose built fuel efficient vessel of
120 tonne bollard pull is completed for the remainder of the contract.

AMSA is committed to probity and compliance with the Commonwealth Procurement Rules and
achieving value for money for industry and the community. Our procurement and contract
management has been reviewed recently by the ANAO and we were proud of the positive report
that resulted. An unsuccessful tenderer in a procurement is specifically afforded rights under the
Government Procurement (Judicial Review) Act should they feel our procurement does not comply
with those rules, and we know the unsuccessful bidder for the original aid to navigation
maintenance work is aware of that process.

Crispin Hull article tabled by Sen McDonald:









Hmm...perhaps trouble afoot for Kinley & CO with the Senate RRAT Committee?? -

While on the subject of other matters of transport safety, I note that tomorrow in the NSW Senate Estimates, for the first time in it's short 20 year history, OTSI will be appearing??





Hint: Could be worth a bit of a gander...

MTF...P2