Ray Lipscombe served in the Royal Australian Navy from 1964 to 1973 as a radio operator prior to joining the Australian Public Service in mid-1973. From 1981 until his retirement in 2006 he was engaged full time on oil spill related matters with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA).

As Manager Operations with AMSA he was responsible for the operational management of Australia's National Plan to Combat Pollution of the Sea by Oil (National Plan), this included being the appointed on scene co-ordinator for major oil pollution incidents for which AMSA had combat and statutory agency responsibility.

He was also responsible for the management and delivery of a range of National Plan programs, including the training and equipment purchasing programs.

Mr Lipscombe has either attended or been involved with most significant oil spills and ship groundings which have occurred in Australia over the past 28 years, including the MT Kirki incident in 1991 where he was on scene co-ordinator. With other AMSA personnel he later took part in the ship-to-ship cargo transfer phase of this operation at sea off Dampier.

In March 1991 Mr Lipscombe was seconded on a government to government basis as one of a small number of Australian advisers to the Saudi Arabian authorities combating the Gulf War oil spill. Apart from his role as adviser, he served on the planning committee determining response strategies and took part in the aerial surveillance of oil affected coastal and offshore areas in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the northern gulf.

Mr Lipscombe’s knowledge and experience has also seen him undertake a range of marine environment protection related work in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Western Samoa, Vietnam and the Peoples Republic of China. For many years he attended International Maritime Organization (IMO) meetings in London as Australian delegate on the OPRC Working Group. He has presented papers on Australia’s National Plan and related subjects at conferences in Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and the USA. In 2002 he was chair of one of the four sessions at the 3rd R&D Conference held in Brest, France.

Mr Lipscombe was awarded the Australian Public Service Medal (PSM) in 1996 in recognition of his “outstanding public service” in marine environment protection matters.

Since his retirement from AMSA in February 2006 Mr Lipscombe has worked for ORCA as its senior consultant. He is a member of ORCA’s oil spill response Incident Management Team (IMT) that is available nationwide to provide support to government and industry agencies affected by a major oil spill.