AMSA inspection report 2025 reveals latest trends
As part of its commitment to vessel safety, inspectors from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) undertake checks to ensure domestic commercial vessels (DCV) are safe and comply with Australian regulations and standards.
Each year, AMSA analyses inspection data across all domestic commercial vessels and regulated Australian vessels (RAVs) operating in Australian ports.
For DCVs, AMSA employs a ‘targeting prioritisation model’ that is risk-based. Several factors are used to calculate a risk score for DCVs including compliance history, age of a vessel, construction, operation, and certification status. The higher the risk score the more frequently a DCV is likely to be inspected. AMSA continues to refine the DCV risk calculator based on evolving inspection data, allowing further refinement of risk scores and prioritisation.
The purpose of this report is to provide data to AMSA so it can produce a risk-based approach to its National Compliance Plan.
The latest inspections found the most common issues were structural and equipment problems and safety management system (SMS) issues, partly due to recently updated rules.
Reflecting its safety focus, the number of DCV inspections increased in 2025 by nine per cent to 2481 (compared with 2275 in 2024), allowing the AMSA inspectorate to focus on higher-risk vessels.
Despite the increased inspections, efficiency notices showed an 8.4 per cent decrease from 2024, indicating a meaningful improvement in overall compliance.
However, it wasn’t all good news, with detainable deficiencies increasing from 140 to 198 – an increase of 41.4 per cent – indicating persistent safety‑critical issue in structural conditions and Safety Management System (SMS) implementation.
122 of the DCV inspections included operational monitoring, with inspectors observing the crew performing an emergency drill or operational procedure to assess the effectiveness of the vessel’s safety management system.
Marine Safety Inspectors will issue a DCV with a deficiency if they reasonably believe that a condition on the vessel is in contravention of the National Law Act 2012, including associated regulations and standards.
Deficiencies which are assessed as having a high risk to safety of persons or the environment will likely lead to further compliance action.
The most common deficiencies reported in 2025 were:
- Life-saving appliances (22 per cent of all deficiencies),
- SMS (20 per cent of all deficiencies), and
- Fire Safety (14 per cent of all deficiencies).
The highest deficiency rates by vessel class in 2024 remained for fishing vessels (4.27) and passenger vessels (3.78), followed by non-passenger vessels (2.95) and hire and drive vessels (2.51).
For deficiencies that are a high risk to safety of persons or the environment, AMSA may use a National Law notice to ensure that the DCV does not operate until the high risk is rectified. This could be in the form of a prohibition notice, a dire risk deficiency action notice or a detention notice.
You can review the full report here