Transport Operations (Marine Safety) Act 1994

The overall primary objective of this Act is, consistent with the objectives of the Transport Planning and Coordination Act 1994, to provide a system that achieves an appropriate balance between—

regulating the maritime industry to ensure marine safety; and

enabling the effectiveness and efficiency of the Queensland maritime industry to be further developed.

In particular, the objectives of this Act are—

to allow the Government to have a strategic overview of marine safety and related marine operational issues; and

to establish a system under which—

marine safety and related marine operational issues can be effectively planned and efficiently managed; and

influence can be exercised over marine safety and related marine operational issues in a way that contributes to overall transport efficiency; and

account is taken of the need to provide adequate levels of safety with an appropriate balance between safety and cost.

These objectives are to be achieved for Queensland regulated ships mainly by—

imposing general safety obligations to ensure seaworthiness and other aspects of marine safety; and

allowing a general safety obligation to be discharged by complying with relevant standards or in other appropriate ways chosen by the person on whom the obligation is imposed.

In particular, a Queensland regulated ship may be taken to sufficiently comply with a general safety obligation even though a competent person has not issued a survey report for the ship.

A further objective of this Act is to manage the operation and activities of ships.

The objectives of the Act, and how they are achieved, are further explained in part 3.