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May 16th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
Two Northern Territory politicians have told Parliament they would like to see changes to recreational boating safety and regulations.
These would include blood alcohol restrictions for skippers and a boat identification system.
Daly MLA Gary Higgins became emotional after telling Parliament today of a fatal boat accident involving someone he knew.
He said he would like to see new regulations introduced to cover recreational boats and their skippers, and called for a bipartisan approach to bring about change.
“I am not suggesting (boat) registration or anything along those lines,” he said.
“I fell relatively strongly about this,” he said.
Mr Higgins said he did not think the regulations would affect the Territory lifestyle.
Independent Member for Nelson, Gerry Wood, agreed and said he’d like to see the introduction of alcohol restrictions for skippers as well as boat identification.
He also agreed that boat registration was not necessary.
Meanwhile, water police in Darwin say they were called to help the same unsafe catamaran twice in two days.
They say a harbour pilot boat towed the catamaran to Fannie Bay after it reported rudder problems yesterday.
But it then slipped anchor overnight and drifted into the harbour again.
The 60-year-old skipper contacted water police for help but couldn’t say where he was located.
Police told the man how to get a GPS reading from his mobile phone and the boat was eventually towed to safety again.
They say the man had no marine charts, no navigational aids and little knowledge of Darwin Harbour.
Topics:
government-and-politics,
fishing-aquaculture,
lifestyle,
nt,
darwin-0800
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Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-16/mlas-call-for-nt-recreational-boat-regulations/4694678
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