Critical supply chains and Australian maritime training requirements

Abstract

The Offshore and Specialist Ships Australia paper has focussed on two of the program themes being: access to the right skills including STEM, with STEM being a critical part of both Deck and Engineer Officer training and improving and securing supply chain connectivity. We see these two items are critical elements for the Maritime requirements of the Offshore sector for Oil and Gas export plus both construction and demobilisation of offshore facilities, pilotage of vessels and the requirement of internal maritime knowledge within organisations. The focus on this document will be twofold: Firstly, the current critical lack of qualified deck and engineer officers and how this can be rectified. The lack of domestic training has recently been identified by both Maritime Industry Australia Ltd and Australian Resources & Energy Employer Association as being at a crisis point. Secondly, the lack of an Australian strategic fleet (including a viable Australian International Shipping Register (AISR)) and the consequent vulnerability of our critical maritime export and import supply chains. We believe that both these theme items are mutually dependent and are in urgent need of the attention of both the wider energy export industry and Federal and State Governments.