A tireless campaigner for change in an industry famous for glamorous holidays – but with an underlying deadly current – was among hundreds of recipients of an Order of Australia Medal.

Queenslander Mark Brimble was among the 604 general division OAM awardees, recognised for his work to help victims of incidents of the “lawless” cruise ship industry.

He began his crusade after the shocking death of his former wife, Dianne, under suspicious circumstances on a P&O cruise ship in 2002.

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Dianne, a 42-year-old mother of three from Brisbane, died within 24 hours of embarking on a nine-day cruise, apparently of a drug overdose.

She was found to have ingested a deadly combination of alcohol and the drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate, better known as GHB.

Dianne Brimble was a mother-of-three from Brisbane. Photo: AAP

An inquest followed, but to date, the circumstances around her death remain unclear.

The loss motivated Mr Brimble to fight for change in the cruise ship industry, to prevent another family going through “the things that we went through in those years”.

“The public scrutiny, and the awful circumstances and information that had to be shared to try to find the truth, that even to this day we still don’t know,” he told The New Daily.

He said it was an honour to be recognised, but he would “give up the award” to see his work for change come to fruition.

“But if this award allows me to shine brighter in the areas I am working in then I accept it graciously … I hope I can be worthy of the honour that I have been bestowed,” he said.

‘Archaic laws dating back to Captain Cook’

Through not-for-profit organisation International Cruise Victims, Mr Brimble, who heads the Australian chapter, has continued his work for change in what is a self-regulated global industry.

It is an incredibly difficult industry to navigate.

“It takes time to understand them and a considerable amount of reading, as a laymen to this industry, to get some type of grasp as to what this industry is all about,” he said.

“We have got archaic laws going back to the days of Captain Cook that still apply because that was the laws at sea. I think the last person who made a change … was Winston Churchill and that was just because of the Second World War.

“We have allowed these cruise ships to build these huge postcodes … with up to 8000 people on board floating around.

“[Deaths at sea] should not happen, we don’t allow it to happen in the airline industry why are we allowing the lawlessness so much in the cruise industry.”

Both government and industry have a role to play in change, but Mr Brimble said the Federal Government in particular could evoke change through better regulation of ships that sail into Australian ports.

Other measures, like monitored CCTV or man-overboard technology, which could detect the loss of passengers from the boat, could serve to improve safety and security on cruise ships.

Although some companies had employed these measures, it was an incredibly difficult to achieve widespread change.

“Unfortunately when you walk the gangplank of a ship, you are stepping onto a foreign owned ship that is registered to a flag state which could be anywhere from Malta to the Bahamas, it is owned by a corporation outside of Australia and it is going to be sailing into international waters which are murky when it comes to the laws that should apply,” he said.