Two companies operating high-speed tourist boats in the Bay of Islands have been fined and ordered to pay reparation after incidents in which passengers were seriously injured.
Intercity Group, which operated the Excitor Three has to pay a total of $270,000, while Seafort Holdings, the operator of the Mac Attack must pay a total of $120,000.
The companies appeared in the Auckland District Court on Monday over incidents that happened in December 2010 and early last year.
Three woman passengers on the Excitor Three on separate trips to the Hole in the Rock attraction on 12 January and 22 March last year suffered serious injuries to their vertebrae when the inflatable craft smacked down on large waves.
Intercity Group pleaded guilty in court to two charges under the Health and Safety in Employment Act of failing to take all practicable steps to ensure that no action or inaction by an employee at work harmed any other person.
Maritime New Zealand says despite four similar incidents between January and March 2011, including two causing serious injury, Intercity Group did not stop its operation to fully investigate the causes of injury.
The authority suspended the vessel's operating licence after the incident on 22 March and the company has since taken the boat out of service.
Maritime New Zealand says the company did not respond to concerns from passengers and one of its skippers about the 12-and-a-half-metre inflatable boat.
Meanwhile, Seafort Holdings pleaded guilty in court of failing to take all practicable steps to ensure no action or inaction of any employee at work harmed any other person.
The charge relates to a trip in December 2010 when an Auckland woman suffered a broken back while on the Mac Attack vessel. The company was fined $30,000 and ordered to pay reparation of $90,000 to the woman.
Maritime New Zealand says the cases highlight the need for high-speed boat operators to continually adapt and evaluate safety systems.
Victim says she is permanently disabled
Petula Patey suffered serious back injuries while on the Excitor Three last year and says she now has a permanent disability.
"There was an excruciating pain through my spine and I knew immediately that something was really dreadfully wrong. People were screaming because other people were injured as well.
"I have to be in a rehabilitation programme which I do twice a week and which I will have to do for the rest of my life in order to keep a good level of mobility."
She told Radio New Zealand's Checkpoint programme on Monday she was staggered to hear that a couple of months after her accident the same thing happened again to another woman.
Ms Patey is to receive $60,000 in reparation.
Intercity Group says it has pulled out of running the tourist trips because there is no way to make them safe.
Chief executive Malcolm Johns told Checkpoint the company spent a lot of time trying to identify the problem and was satisfied it had been corrected, but this proved wrong.
"We don't believe that we could engineer the risk out of these products, and we've subsequently withdrawn completely from all high-speed craft operations in the Bay of Islands."
Mr Johns says he accepts the judge's penalty and is sorry for what happened to the passengers.
