The Australian government should have listened to warnings from as early as 2018 that its $528m icebreaking research ship was too big to safely pass underneath Hobart’s bridge, a senate inquiry has been told.
The RSV Nuyina, which resupplies Australia’s three Antarctic stations and conducts crucial climate research, is berthed at Hobart’s Macquarie Wharf, to the south of the Tasman Bridge. But its refuelling station at Selfs Point is a short distance upstream on the other side of the bridge.
Earlier this year, Tasmania’s port authority denied the ship permission to pass underneath the bridge because it was concerned the ship could collide with the bridge, causing a fatal accident. In 1975, 12 people died when a cargo ship crashed into the same bridge, causing part of it to collapse.
TasPort’s chief executive, Anthony Donald, has told a senate inquiry that the Australian Antarctic Division was told what the maximum ship dimensions were to safely pass underneath in 2018. He said the ship’s beam was then widened on multiple occasions until it was nearly 10 metres wider than initially designed.
“The initial information provided to the AAD with respect to the requirements of the transit was in 2018,” Donald said.
“If I was investing in [it] a large amount of money, which clearly was done, I would take into account all of the design requirements for that vessel. That’s what I would have done.”
Donald was also critical of the AAD for spending more than half a billion dollars on a ship without having what he considered to be an appropriate dock to support it.
“I still remain to this day a little perplexed as to why the AAD would invest such significant money in a really important vessel for Australia and not confirm arrangements and put the appropriate things in place to secure a dedicated wharf that was fit for purpose,” Donald said.
“We respected the choices they made. But to have a vessel of that significance, tied up in a lay-up berth arrangement, with the inability to load and unload, with understanding from our perspective that at a moment’s notice we may deem that berth or that wants to be unserviceable …”
When the RSV Nuyina was denied permission, it was forced to sail hundreds of kilometres north to another port on the state’s north coast to refuel before travelling south for an evacuation mission. The journey costs taxpayers more money and burns more emissions.
In May 2021, AAD officials told the then South Australian senator Rex Patrick they were “confident the vessel will be approved to go underneath the Tasman Bridge”.
When the AAD was asked why the beam had expanded by 10m, a spokesperson said: “Conditional approval was granted based on the final ship design in Feb 2022. The Nuyina was completed and arrived in Hobart in August 2021”.
Donald told the senate inquiry that TasPorts did not automatically ban the ship from passing underneath the bridge based solely on its dimensions, and instead wanted to test whether it could be safely done.
The AAD will appear before the inquiry on Thursday.
