Barry Soper: Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent on interim report into HMNZS Manawanui sinking

An interim Court of Inquiry report has found the HMSNZ Manawanui’s sinking was caused by a series of human errors.

The navy vessel went down nearly two months ago after hitting a reef during a survey of the Samoan coast.

The report found the crew had failed to turn off the ship’s auto-pilot when supposed too, but as they tried to slow it down, they accelerated into the reef, and wasn’t until 10 minutes later when autopilot was switched off that they regained control.

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper joined Heather du Plessis-Allan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Barrie your political correspondence with us now, Hay Barry.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Good afternoon, Heather. I'm really pleased that Drake's coming. I'll
be in the mosh pit right at the.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Front doing your primal scream about Trump. He's American, isn't
he's American?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hey, whatb he likes Trump is? What did you make
of the money when we're going down?

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Absolutely incredible, wasn't it.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Oh he's Canadian. I'm sorry, he's Canadian. He sorry, sorry,
he's carry on with the boat.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
What I admired was the chief of the Navy, Rear
Admiral garn Golding, getting up and telling it like it is,
is not trying to guild the lily. And I really
I thought, you know, he'll get a lot of brownie
points for that. Even though a minute's unbelievable how it happened.

(00:46):
The thinking just gets worse the more you hear about it.
Here's the rare Admiral Golding earlier today.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
All vessels in our fleet have a similar functionality for
an autopilot. So if you are doing direct changes and
manually when the ship is an autopilot, it won't adjust.
But if you're doing accelerational deceleration. An autopilot, it will
take those orders and it's just a matter of making
sure that those out in the fleet understand the importance

(01:15):
of being aware whether you're an autopilot or not. But
on the day, muscle memory from the person in control
should have lent over to that panel and checked, well,
there was a person it's on who's in control of
the ship. I'm not naming that person. I'm saying that
the person that was in that position was in control
of a ship. There was another person, because of the location,

(01:38):
being close to the reef, was supervising that individual.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, it doesn't sound as though the captain was on
the bridge at the time. You'll remember Judith Collins, I
know you're going to be talking to her shortly. She
was full of praise of the ship's captain, Levon Gray.
Today she was a little more conciliatory.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
We've had this sort of thing happen in this civilian
world with fairies, which had one just recently about the
same time, with the auto pilots and people not working
out what to do. I think what it says is
that we are not a country that is going to
shy away from the truth human error is the one
thing you can't guarantee against, but it's certainly one thing
we can all learn from.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Did we need reminding about the fairy going ground?

Speaker 1 (02:21):
He's got a problem with auto part of Hey do so?
Is Boja here on Tuesday?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, he's having a long lunch here in Auckland on Tuesday.
Essentially he's here to promote his book Unleashed. And I
talked to one of his former teachers at Eton and
they say, they said to me, he's never changed. He's
always been scruffy, always late for meetings, and watching him
being interviewed today, it certainly was the case. But the

(02:49):
teacher also said he was one of the brightest students
that he had ever taught. In an interview before leaving Britain,
Borrow spoke warmly about Foreign Minister Udinston Peters and likes
the fact that Donald Trump has been returned to the
White House.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
I'm sure Winston will have spotted this is the point
that it's not what he says, is what he does.
When you look at what he actually does from the
point of view of liberal internationalism, which I basically happen
to believe in. He's very very signed and he was
much tougher, you could say, with the Russians over Ukraine

(03:23):
than the previous Democrat administration, and so.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Putin was in full praise of Trump today. So it'll
be interesting to see what sort of dialogue will take
place when he takes over the office in January.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Listen really quickly, why is it what's brought on this
business with Brook van Velden deciding that wealthy workers should
be able to be fired with that good reason?

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Essentially, well, essentially from what I understand, it's because the
employment court is being basically flooded at the moment and
they're trying to free up that. But the point that
the Prime Minister made in the stand up that he
did in the South Island today was that if somebody
on one hundred and eighty thousand, and I'm sure they
would have negotiated a contract at that sort of money

(04:06):
with their employers so they can put into their contract
stuff that has to be abided by. So it's not
just a case of somebody one hundred and eighty grand
being shown the door without good reason.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Yeah, Barry, thanks very much, really appreciate it. Barry So
for senior political correspondent.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
For more from Hither duplessy Alan Drive.

Speaker 5 (04:24):
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