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A VIEW FROM THE CHAIR REFLECTING ON RULES AND REGULATIONS BY DAVID LEDSON David Ledson, the chairman of the Maritime New Zealand Authority, adds his perspective to the changes taking place at Maritime NZ O n some occasions when I get into conversations with members of the maritime community they raise the issue of representation of their particular "community of interest" on the Maritime New Zealand Authority. The Authority is accountable to the Minister of Transport for the performance of Maritime New Zealand. If it is to do this effectively at the governance level then it requires members with a balance of relevant competencies and skills among them. Each of these skills does not need to be held by every member, but they need to be at the table collectively. Given that Martime NZ's principal role is as the national maritime regulator, then it is unsurprising that two of the important competencies on the Authority are both maritime and regulatory ones. I came into the Martime NZ Authority with a maritime background, even though one correspondent to this magazine did point out that it was, "just in the Navy!" Thinking about those comments as I sat down to write this piece prompted me to rummage through some quotation sites on the internet to find something appropriate. In doing so, I found a quotation by a French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. While it is not strictly relevant it's close enough and it does quite nicely reflect my response to similar sorts of comments: "A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy." Moving on from the quality of my nautical/maritime background, just as there is a view in some quarters that understates that dimension of a career in the Navy, there is also a view that overstates the rules and regulations dimension. Of course rules and regulations are an important part of the Navy and many other organisations, but as I look back I never saw them as existing in a regulatory space in the way that Martime NZ does. In fact the only regulatory space that I occupied was on the two occasions in HMNZS Waikato in the early 1980s when I was involved in the arrest of foreign fishing boats illegally fishing. One, a squid boat, we caught 11.5 miles off Cape Foulwind. Another, a trawler 212 miles off North Cape. For a variety of reasons neither experience was particularly enjoyable and it was certainly not comfortable. Setting the effects of a rough sea to one side, sitting on the bridge of the squid boat while HMNZS Waikato escorted it back to Wellington and being brought cups of coffee by the master who knew it was very likely he would lose his boat, his catch and his livelihood, was not a comfortable experience. So, being involved in the regulatory space on the Martime NZ Authority is a learning experience for me, and I come across a lot of new stuff. A while ago I came across something called the Regulatory Pyramid. This pyramid is constructed on the basis of some attitude to compliance being used to group the participants 28 Professional Skipper May/June 2012 in any regulated activity, and then to associate the most appropriate regulatory intervention/response with each group. What it illustrates is that: • The largest group want to "do the right thing", and for these people the most appropriate response it to "make it easy". • The next largest group "try but don't always succeed", and the strategy here should be to help them to comply. • The next group, just below the top of the pyramid "don't want to comply", and the best strategy to use with them is to "deter by detection". • The final and smallest group, at the pyramid's tip, "have decided not to comply" and the response with them is quite clear: "use the full force of the law". As a novice in this area, I have found that this pyramid gives me some useful insights into the realities of the maritime community with which we in Martime NZ engage: • The vast majority of participants want to have an open and constructive relationship with us. We need to make sure we can identify this group, because here we can really work usefully to get the best safety outcomes to reduce the negative effects of regulations on their activities, costs and opportunities. • We can use words like co-regulation, cooperation, and partnership as much as we want, and we can invest significant organisational energy in getting our industry engagement right, but there will still remain a small number of participants who are fixed on doing the wrong thing. Their aim is not to work with us, it is explicitly to work against us. We need to be sure we can quickly and accurately identify this group so that we can seek to evict them from the maritime sector. • The pyramid is not a process. When we identify the group who have "decided not to comply", the default response is not to attempt to move them down through the various levels to the pyramid's base. More often than not, the most appropriate response will be to "use the full force of the law". As Martime NZ director Keith Manch recently said, "…we can engage with and support people to do what they need to do. However, balanced against that will always be the need to stand up and take direct action where it is warranted." • Similarly, a participant will not necessarily remain in the same group during their time in the maritime industry, nor will they necessarily move incrementally from one group to the next. For example, someone could start off in the largest group and then due to economic pressures move directly to the "don't want to comply" group. • If we are to use the principles that underpin the regulatory pyramid to implement a 21st century regulatory context at Martime NZ then we need to invest in the resources we need to find, gather, analyse, and extract the right information to enable us to draw the right conclusions so that we can make the best decisions. A final thought on the pyramid, I think it is a worthwhile goal for it to be challenged as an accurate depiction of the situation in New Zealand in terms of the groupings and that we do achieve a vibrant, viable, maritime community, in which all participants work and play safely and securely on clean waters.