Inquiry looms for Australian Maritime Safety Authority

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority faces a Senate inquiry after a ferocious attack by a government senator.

Nationals Senator Barry O'Sullivan. Picture: AAP

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority faces a Senate inquiry after a ferocious attack by a government senator into its handling of the death of a Perth father who is believed to have fallen off a boat.

The body of Damien Mills, 35, was found about three nautical miles off Leighton Beach in Western Australia on November 1, 2014, a day after he had been on board a charter boat called Ten Sixty Six for a networking function.

The skipper and deckhand conducted a headcount of 35 passengers on board but the WA Coroner found there were only 34 passengers and there was evidence Mills’s death may have been prevented if his disappearance had been discovered sooner.

Senator Barry O’Sullivan and Labor senator Glenn Sterle grilled AMSA chief executive Mick Kinley over the incident at Senate estimates on Monday night, with the former labelling the CEO “the worst witness I’ve had in front of me in six years”.

The senators criticised AMSA for failing to make at least two headcounts — one at the start of the voyage and one at the end — mandatory in the wake of the accident, and repeatedly attacked Mr Kinley after he conceded it was his decision not to prepare a brief of evidence for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

“There has to be reforms, it’s not hard to enforce. If they’re tour operators or vessels taking passengers out there, a headcount must be done before the boat pushes off from the jetty; there’s nothing hard about doing a headcount halfway through, and a compulsory headcount when they get back to port. AMSA needs to ­enforce it,” Senator Sterle told The Australian.

The Senate rural and regional affairs and transport legislation committee will look at AMSA’s performance in response to Mills’s death.

As of July 1 last year, the master of a voyage that is less than 12 hours’ long must ensure at least one headcount is conducted of all passengers and know the number of passengers on the boat “at any time” as part of their mandatory safety management system.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack told Liberal frontbencher Linda Reynolds in December that there was insufficient evidence for a brief of evidence to prosecute the master of Ten Sixty Six.