The sinking of the Navy's Manawanui ship is an environmental & economic catastrophe for Samoa & New Zealand. Defense Minister Collins and Rear Admiral Golding told the press they would not comment on the causes of the sinking, saying there would be a Court of Inquiry to find out what happened .. and then immediately proceeded to comment on the possible causes of the sinking and pre-judge that very Court.
Golding, who was appointed by Collins little over one month ago, praised the leadership of the ship's Commander, saying she made the right call to evacuate and “saved lives”. How does he know she made the right call without holding all the evidence, which will only come out in an Inquiry. Who knows what happened? Maybe after the ship hit the reef and began taking on water, it could've still been saved. Maybe the crew panicked, abandoning ship too early? Maybe after leaving the ship it then caught fire and with no-one left to extinguish the flames, it was the fire that caused the complete sinking. That would imply a terrible error of judgment on behalf of NZ's Defense Ministry, Collins, who probably knew of the decision as it was being made, and the ship's crew. Minister Collins has now speculated about the ship losing power, again pre-judging the Court. Even if it did, why weren't anchors dropped? For Minister Collins & the Navy Chief to apportion blame (since saying the ship lost power blames engineers) & condoning the abandonment before the Court of Inquiry is so wrong.
When the Rena partially sank off Tauranga Harbour, salvage bills ended up topping $600 million. The sinking of the Manawanui is on a different scale. It may put diesel poison into Samoa's food supply for decades. Collins stated, “This could have been a truly terrible day”. What's she on about? It was a terrible day. Is she only talking about the crew? Doesn't she care about the consequences for Samoans? The sinking has blown the entire budget savings which the Finance Minister has called for in our health system, assuming NZ faces its responsibilities & engages in the multi billion dollar clean-up that will have to be sub-contracted to other countries, since we don't have the required equipment.
When the Rena partially sank off Tauranga Harbour, salvage bills ended up topping $600 million. The sinking of the Manawanui is on a different scale. It may put diesel poison into Samoa's food supply for decades. Collins stated, “This could have been a truly terrible day”. What's she on about? It was a terrible day. Is she only talking about the crew? Doesn't she care about the consequences for Samoans? The sinking has blown the entire budget savings which the Finance Minister has called for in our health system, assuming NZ faces its responsibilities & engages in the multi billion dollar clean-up that will have to be sub-contracted to other countries, since we don't have the required equipment.
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
20 comments:
It's an absolute disaster! What a waste and it all seems so little that has been stated. It's like what you might call an under reaction.
And the ship is designed to find reefs. It just gets worse. Both govt. Labour and National are guilty here, DEI.
I guess that Collins and Golding were just trying to put a positive spin on the incident and avoid a media witch hunt, but to sing the praises of a captain who just lost a $100M ship in peacetime just comes across as fake. It sounds as if gross incompetence (at least of somebody) is something to be expected here.
ABC are reporting an oil slick of several kilometers which will have a huge effect on the fragile ecosystem of the reef.
It is interesting how Labour massively increased the public service, yet gutted the navy. We have several navy ships that can't be used because we don't have the personnel. Is that why a seemingly inexperienced officer was put in charge?
Agreed.
However even if they have bolted before the start gun we live in an age where to say nothing is to suspect conspiracy....
IMO it would have ben better to make a statement without prejudice and then closed their mouths and referred to the inquiry as the judge and jury of the matter.
A good military leader never throws their underlings under the bus as this establishes poor precident to their command.
Regardless of outcome the Commanders career has frankly come up to its best before date quite rapidly because it matters little whose actual fault (if any at all) when you are the captain the buck stops with you and grounding a ship that then sinks while on fire is not an enhancing CV note.
73 seems a huge crew. In NZ culture Saturday night is traditonally party night.Don't know about NZ or today but during WW2 no alcohol allowed on American ships. (My grandfather told how in Wellington an MP at the gangplank whacked each boarding sailor on the pockets with a truncheon to despatch any bottles.)
I agree with the main premise here that the pair have totally prejudged the outcome of the inquiry based on zero evidence.
However I think the environment catastrophe fears are overblown. Unlike the Rena, Manawanui carries neither cargo nor bunker fuel. Instead of heavy insoluble black oil it is powered by diesel that rapidly dissipates and evaporates. It is toxic but it won’t stick around. There are not hundreds of containers of plastic junk to break open and litter the sea for decades.
Professor - there is a saying - "loose lips sink ships", created during WW2 to tell people that "speaking out of turn", on matters that were -
[1] - of no relevance to them
[2] - or that any information they had/knew of/ had been made aware of - if verbally spoken could be passed to an agent, who could then pass it to the enemy.
Sadly Ms. Collins has now "given the enemy (NZ MSM)" information re this sinking of a RNZ Naval ship that they will now use to 'poke the bear', every time she fronts a microphone.
I "place money on the bar" that the Court of Enquiry will find the Ships Master at fault - which may end her Naval career.
Judith need to ask Winston Peters on how to "engage with the media".
From an X post:
I interviewed a female veteran who served as an officer on [U.S.] ships about this incident, and she shared an intriguing perspective I’ve never heard before.
She said that it took men centuries and thousands of shipwrecks to master commanding ships without major incidents, and we should expect some losses as women, who think differently, learn the ropes and gain that experience too doing it their way.
She said losses are to be expected and they are ok especially if there’s no loss of life. She said we shouldn’t try to investigate this from a male perspective but learn lessons from a female perspective.
Too Many Women In The Wrong Places (Again)
Barend, if you look at the statistics women have more car crashes at low speed causing relatively low damage while men have fewer car accidents but when they do crash it is at higher speed and causes way more damage.
The issue that will come to be examined is the issue of skipper selection and did the best candidate stand on the bridge or was there an element DEI.
If that turns out to be the case then it will again set the cause of women in all roles back.
Men have dominated the world but moving to a clean meritocracy needs to be done with care.
Regarding the environment there will be pollution but during WW2 some battles around the Solomons saw 100 boats sunk and the region survived very well, this ship could be a fantastic dive site, do we know how deep the water is.
Doesn't negate my point, SeaBreeze. Men and women may exhibit their own tendencies with regard to doing a job wrongly, but there's still only one way to get it right!
A post at DTNZ.
I don't think people are at all impressed. It really reaches a new low. Shameful.
"A Royal New Zealand survey ship that has the equipment to view what’s below the ship such as the sea floor ran aground on a reef that the ship’s equipment did not detect?
Commander Yvonne Gray is an English-born teacher, who moved to New Zealand with her wife in 2012 after falling in love with the country on a campervan tour. She joined the Navy and in ten years made captain and was given command of the Manawanui in December 2022. Meanwhile Judith Collins is doing some proaganda repair work that nobody believes. She would have been better calling for Gray to immediately step down pending an enquiry into her fast track within the navy (and then possibly given a job on the Interisland ferries).
We run around saying how great this country is when it is a world wide laughing stock and a disaster zone in the making"
>"She joined the Navy and in ten years made captain"
A man entering the RN has to wait at least 18 years to achieve the rank of Captain.
Says it all, huh?
Chalk the loss of that $100 million ship up to 'affirmative action' or DEI if you prefer.
1,000 tonnes of diesel will cause a mess and have an significant effect on marine life. But not for ever. Hydrocarbons are hydrogen and carbon. the building blocks and the energy source of life. Micro-organisms in the sea, bacteria etc will use the hydrocarbons as a food source and consume the diesel. Slowly at first, but given the food source, they will multiply and consume more quickly. In a year it will be gone. It happened in the tropical gulf of Mexico with the BP well spill. It happened in the Arctic with the Exxon Valdez. Much slower in the arctic, but it did happen.
We will be vociferous in our condemnation of this environmental catastrophe. But it won't be the end of the world. Nature will take care of itself in time.
I imagine Collins was stuck in a 'damned if you do....' situation, but she should have invoked the 'wait for the inquiry' line at every opportunity. There was of course the good and politically useful result that 'no New Zealanders died...' Another factor was that Monday 7 was meant to be Good News Day with the govt's 149 fast-tracked projects, and this unexpected story took up a lot of oxygen.
Re the Captain. She has the rank of Commander, not Captain (she was in charge of the vessel hence the term Captain) I read in the press she was in the RN for nineteen years, and was a Warfare Officer (and a trainee teacher before she joined the navy) She emigrated to NZ and joined our navy. Apparently, this was her first ship command. As one person has commented, how does a ship with all that underwater survey equipment, collide with a reef? Can only assume some technical malfunction, which may explain the fire. Anyway it is all conjecture at this stage, but I think we should give the Captain the benefit of the doubt, until it is determined otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty??
Precisely, Barend.
There is no positive spin on this. Regardless of how Diesel may breakdown to it's basic molecular structure and be consumed by micro organisms there is still a huge inconvenience to many people on Samoa with their way of life completely disrupted and their food resources interfered with.
It won't go away by next week exactly.
You can not keep trying to make this okay by saying it took men thousands of years how to navigate. The men's way. So we now have to do it the women's way, pure baloney. There is just the right way. Stop womansplaining it away. It doesn't wash.
I thought she was a Commodore. Not sure what she commanded, certainly not the waves.
The minister Collins has made speculative comments throughout the entire debacle on TV and online print. Very unprofessional and often misleading or deliberately deceiving. Blaming the weather, rough conditions, hidden reef hazards and worst of all "it happened at nighttime". So far these have proven very comically dubious statements. Weather reports describe the conditions as fair with light winds. The reef hit was well known and charted. And I'm pretty sure navy vessels also operate at night.
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