Judith Collins: Defence Minister says HMNZS Manawanui sinking is 'incomprehensible' after interim report release

Some action's already been taken to try and prevent a repeat of the HMNZS Manawanui sinking.

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

The interim Court of Inquiry report's found it was caused by a series of human errors - with the crew failing to turn off the ship's auto-pilot when they were supposed too.

As they tried to slow it down, they instead accelerated faster into the reef.

Defence Minister Judith Collins told Heather du Plessis-Allan it’s incomprehensible.

“Except that we also know that sometimes even with the best will in the world, people make mistakes, and then someone else makes a mistake, and it becomes, in this case, a lost ship and people’s lives being unnecessarily put at risk.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, so it's been revealed that the Monowhenu we
grounded and sunk off the coast of some war because
no one realized that the ship was on autopilot. The
crew had apparently tried to turn the ship, but it
wouldn't turn. They tried to get it to break, but
it wouldn't break. Instead, it's sped up and grounded, and
the autopilot stayed on for at least another ten minutes.
Here's the Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral Garren Golding. Remaining
an autopilot resulted in the ship maintaining a course of

(00:23):
three four zero degrees towards land until grounding and eventually stranding.
The Minister of Defense is Judith Collins. Hi, Judith, hell it.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Heather, Judith.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
It seems staggeringly stupid, is it?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, it certainly is something that many of us would
feel was incomprehensible, except that we also know that sometimes,
even with the best will in the world, people make mistakes,
and then someone else makes a mistake and it becomes
in this case, lost ship and people's lives being unnecessarily

(00:56):
put at risk.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
What's the mistake?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Well, there's a whole serious mistakes, particularly around autopilots, and
wanting forgetting or not noticing that the autopilot was on,
then continuing to act and to take actions that you
would do with it's called thrusters, which is to get
away from the reef, but actually don't work if the
autopilot's on, and just the most basic things not being done,

(01:22):
and it's obviously a very serious situation. I'd say this
at least, you know, maybe surunts up but gets the
facts and it and it owns them.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
From my understanding from listening to that press conference today,
all they had to do was look on the screen
that would have said autopilot on. Is that right?

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah? Pretty much.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
How many people were on the bridge at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, there's obviously a few there, but the main people
there was the person who was in charge of that ship,
in the words, the person who was driving it. Then
there's the supervisor of that person, and those people are
obviously subject to some investigation, plus also the commander of

(02:04):
the ship, who wasn't there at that moment.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
So there's at least three people who are who are
in charge, or at least two because the commander wasn't there,
and neither of them thought to look at the screen.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, so it's incomprehensible, isn't it, except that we know
that this is the same sort of thing that happened
recently with the theory and the cook straight.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
So well, at least they d you, to be fair,
had the excuse of a whole new system that they
didn't understand. Is that, can we use the same excuse
for the Navy?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
There's no well, there's no excuse really, is there. And
the fact is is that the it's embarrassing for everybody.
But as always saying, at the moment, these things, terrible
things do happen, but it's how you handle them that's
really important. Then the Navy is doing that.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
The commander, that's the lady. That's the lady who was
in charge of.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
The ship here, that's the commanding officer.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
She's cocked a lot of grief. But are you telling
me she willn't actually on the bridge. This has got
nothing to do with her.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, you can't say it's nothing to do with her
because she's the commander. But what I can say is
that it's certainly not a gender issue here. I can
say that there were three people who are the own
subject to investigation to a male and one is female.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yeah, but she wasn't on the bridge.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Was she. No, she wasn't at that moment.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
These three people who are under investigation subjects or disciplinary
process is the app Is it possible outcome that they
will lose their jobs over this?

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah? So the these are called community separatist process. It's
outside the cord of inquiry. It will it will occur
after that gord of inquiry is completely finished. But the
point of that is it's dealt with in a really
serious way. And it was the very unusual although I

(03:55):
don't want to go around prejudging or anything very unusual
if there weren't courts martial though this.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Matter all right, judor thank you for your time appreciated
the Huth Collins, the Minister of Defense. For more from
Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news Talks. It'd
be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.