Judith Collins: Defence Minister on the human error that caused Navy ship Manawanui to sink

Human error and failing to disengage autopilot has been confirmed as the root cause of a New Zealand Navy ship running aground and sinking in the Pacific, a report has concluded.

Crew were unaware the ship was on autopilot mode when they tried to adjust course, and key personnel were distracted and not properly trained; the report found.

The $100 million HMNZS Manawanui motored into a reef off the coast of Samoa at a speed of 11 knots last October.

Defence Minister talks to Ryan Bridge about the report.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Human error and competence. These are the main problems that
led to the sinking of the Money were Nui. This
is the Court of Inquiry report out today. The crew
were unaware that the ship was on autopilot mode and
then they tried to adjust course without disengaging it. Defense
Minister Jude of Collins with me hime Minister, Oh hello, Ryan,
So how do you not know you're on autopilot? Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Look, don't ask me. I'm not someone who's ever sailed
a ship, but I think the inquiry was very clear
human error was the major factor here and quite clearly
we were fortunate not to have seventy five people dead.
But it certainly doesn't make for you excellent for good reading.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
No, well, it's particularly not when we've still got other
vessels that are out there, right and we had people
on this one who didn't know they were an autopilot.
Do the rest of the Navy know what all o
pilot means?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes, they do. So. One of the interesting things today
is when the Chief of Navy advised the media that
they were very much aware of some of the lessons
from this inquiry, and so they made sure that they
updated and changed the procedures to make sure everybody knew everything.
I mean, one of the issues that he's raised is

(01:17):
that they have you know, there's nine ships and five
and five of them five different platforms. In other words,
this ship was quite different from other ships. But that's
not good enough, and they're very aware of that, and
they're not making excuses. They're saying, we're stuffed up, we're
fixing it, We're very sorry for what's happened.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, but are you confident in that? I mean, does
everybody on the ships right now know what autopilot being on?
Looks like?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I don't know that everybody needs to know what auto.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Players all the people that need to know.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
The people that need to know. Yes, I'm sure that
they do know, and I don't know that these people
didn't know, But it certainly seem that in the moment
the report didn't know.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
I mean, obviously you wouldn't know, otherwise you'd turn it off, presumably,
wouldn't you.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah. Well, I think that's what was really clear is
that there was a distraction, and that distraction was not
good enough. You can't simply can't have people distracted when
they're in the bridge and the ship is right at
a coral reef. It cannot happen. This is something allowed
to happen.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Somebody was asking the captain questions while she was trying
to navigate this. Would you know what they were asked?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
I don't know that that is necessarily true, because it's
the officer on the on the watch was at that
moment in the bridge rather than the captain.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Kept so somebody was asking the officer rather than the
captain questions and that was distracting.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
It appears to be the one of the issues that
came out of the inquiry.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Problem is there so many issues that have come out
of the inquiry. I mean, who who is in charge
of staffing the ship and training people to make sure
that they knew how to use it, which clearly they didn't.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Well, I would say that most people on the ship
knew exactly what their jobs were and had some form
of muscle memory about using them. But one of the
issues that we has been made very plain is that
there has been quite a significant loss of qualified and
very experienced personnel. And that's still no excuse. You still

(03:33):
simply can't get this stuff wrong. I think one of
the things that was clear for an inquiry is that
there was a willingness to have a can do attitude,
but there's sometimes in very speedy ways. But the problem
with that is if you haven't got everything right, you're
going to be setting yourself up for a major incident.
And that's exactly what's happened here.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
When you say there wasn't enough experience, Were people put
there in positions of authority who shouldn't have been And
was there anything to do with DEI?

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Nothing to do with DEI at all. I thought. One
of the issues is that they've just simply lost so
many personnel. I mean, we have three ships tied up
at the moment and something called care and custody, and
one of the big reasons for that is we don't
have sufficient qualified and experienced personnel to go to see

(04:25):
on all of them. So this is one of the
issues that.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Three of out nine are currently basically non functioning.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
That's the one YEP one is getting made ready because
we'll know we'll be able to take the crew from
Manuanui and get back out. So it cannot underestimate just
how damaging losing seventeen point seven percent of your people
in a year is, in particularly when they're the ten

(04:56):
to fifteen year experienced people and trades like mechanical engineers
or marine engineers and people like that. So so we're
not good enough. We still do things that we have.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Do you do you pay them more? Do you pay
them more? And does that come in your in your
defense plan?

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, we certainly do need to recruit more and we
need to retain more. So we've had a big drop
from that seventeen point seven percent that it got to
attrition to now I think the Navy's about six point
seven percent, so they're still they've really got to a
normal number. Now, Okay, now we do need to get

(05:35):
to recruit.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
All right, when's your defense plan coming, Minister?

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Well, I'm saying very soon, So we've moved from soon
to very soon. It's going to be good.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Judith Collins, Defense Minister. For more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive,
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