Time for some transparency after Aratere grounding
Monday, 22 July 2024
OPINION: Sunday marked one month since Cook Strait ferry the Aratere took an unexpected right turn, hit a beach, and Interislander bosses shut up.
The only clues about the cause from top brass were steering issues — a conclusion any lay person could have reached due to the fact that a 17,816 gross tonnage vessel should not end up on a beach.
Thanks to a leaked safety briefing, we know autopilot was activated — which was permitted by the harbour master in the area — and someone accidentally pushed an “execute” button which triggered the mis-turn.
We also know that crews could not wrestle back control from the autopilot before it was too late. And we know a new steering system was recently replaced, even if the autopilot system had been in place since 2007.
The initial mis-pressing of a button is not the cause of the grounding — people make mistakes but, when it comes to massive ships in narrow bodies of water, these should be able to be fixed fast.
The real cause of the grounding seems to be the inability for the bridge crew to take back control from autopilot in time.
Was it mechanical — in which case, what else is wrong with these ships?
It has been suggested crews had not been trained in the emergency autopilot override since the new steering system. If this is the case, what the heck?
The third option is that all of the highly trained crew aboard a fully crewed deck had somehow forgotten how to turn off autopilot, an action that would apparently happen on most crossings.
June 21 was a quiet winter’s sailing with truck drivers and crew. It happened in about as an ideal spot as possible — a soft, gentle beach — in near-perfect conditions.
But summer is looming and the Interislander fleet will soon be packed with families. The next mishap may not be in such an ideal situation and much of the Picton to Wellington crossing is treacherous.
People need to know that the state-run entity that runs Interislander ferries is up to the job.
They need to know what happened. Why could auto-pilot not be switched off in time?
Was it — as has been suggested — that the new steering system meant there was a new way to disengage autopilot in an emergency, and crews had not been told.
A simple answer would lie in the radio communication to and from the Aratere bridge in the minutes leading to the grounding.
But KiwiRail, which runs Interislander, has refused to release that under the Official Information Act. The reason is a section of the legislation that allows withholding information that would “prejudice the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, and detection of offences, and the right to a fair trial”.
The reasons cited are investigations by Maritime NZ and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC).
To argue that releasing this information would jeopardise those investigations is farcical, not to mention insulting to the work of investigators at TAIC and Maritime NZ.
It could be argued the real reason KiwiRail won’t, in a timely way, release this information, or really any pertinent information about this grounding or past incidents, is that like its ferry, bosses have gone to ground. It would seem they are waiting until it is old news, swallowed up by the next Interislander snafu — which history suggest won’t be far off.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, whose social media post about crew going for coffee while autopilot was on — the coffee was almost certainly wrong — sparked the initial talk of an autopilot mishap, more than a week ago said KiwiRail should give answers “right here, right now”.
Peters and Transport Minister Simeon Brown were asked on Sunday if even they, senior government ministers, had managed to get answers. Peters’ office deferred to Brown, who — with a notably muted tone compared to his pre-election bombast — would only say he was “looking forward to the outcome” of the investigations.
Aren’t we all.