Ardent Leisure hands over 1000 new documents to Dreamworld inquest

The inquest is investigating what happened on October 25, 2016, when Dreamworld’s Thunder River Rapids Ride malfunctioned, killing Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi.

The new documents handed over by Dreamworld owner Ardent Leisure related to incidents on the ride before the 2016 incident.

An incident in 2004 where two rafts bumped together and a woman fell into the water while disembarking was mentioned for the first time on Thursday morning.

Counsel assisting the coroner Ken Fleming, QC, told the coroner that the coroner’s associates were “desperately” struggling to process the 1094 additional documents in time.

An overnight power outage at the courthouse lost hours of work completed overnight, setting the process back further.

Barrister Steven Whybrow, acting for the families of Kate Goodchild and Luke Dorsett, expressed concern that he would not have time to read the documents before former Dreamworld attractions manager Andrew Fyfe took the stand.

On Wednesday, Mr Whybrow asked questions about an email between staff union representative Jarad Drysdale and Mr Fyfe that was discovered attached to an affidavit from Australian Workers Union representative Jason Shepherd.

That email from Mr Drysdale detailed staff concerns around the park after a 2014 incident on the Thunder River Rapids Ride that saw ride operator Stephen Buss fired, and recommended the four-button stop process for the ride be simplified to one button that would stop the entire ride.

Mr Whybrow said the emails between Mr Drysdale and Mr Fyfe referred to an investigation into the safety operations of the Thunder River Rapids Ride after the incident, but that investigation report was not mentioned in any other documentation.

“The lack of any documentation following that incident is of great concern to my clients,” Mr Whybrow said.

“One way or another it was time it was clarified. Are there any more documents about that incident or are there not?”

Dreamworld’s lawyer Bruce Hodgkinson, SC, said he suspected the email from Mr Fyfe was missed in the first search for documents because it referred mistakenly to the Log Ride, not the Thunder River Rapids Ride.

“We had four full-time people going through all of the material that we had, including 600,000 emails,” Mr Hodgkinson said.

“We then had people with much more detailed knowledge of the case spending nearly two weeks going through the documents.

“It’s not simply a matter of pushing a button or putting in a search term and coming up with documents and being satisfied that they are the totality of documents for that issue.

“We are producing documents at this time, we would much prefer to have provided the documents at an earlier time but it proved to be a much bigger task than anyone expected.”

Mr Fyfe was scheduled to appear before the inquest on Friday, but it was suggested his appearance be postponed until the second week of hearings to ensure the lawyers had time to study the new documents.

Dreamworld general manager Troy Margetts was also expected to give evidence next week.

The inquest continued on Thursday morning, with Dreamworld safety officer Ben Hicks continuing his evidence, followed by registered nurse Rebecca Ramsey.

Ms Ramsey was a safety officer and registered nurse working at Dreamworld on the day of the incident with additional qualifications in workplace health and safety.

She arrived at the scene of the tragedy just after paramedic and safety officer John Clark.

“The training that you had in safety, would that training have been sufficient for you to identify any safety issues such as occurred on the 25th october 2016?” Mr Fleming asked.

“No,” Ms Ramsey replied.

Asked if anything could have been done differently on the day of the tragedy as staff responded to the incident, Ms Ramsey said she believed the river rapid alarm not being activated delayed the response.

The river rapid alarm was an alarm manually pressed by ride operators when water pumps failed.

“There was a bit of a delay between the triple two blue call and the triple two gray,” she said.

The triple two blue radio call indicated a medical emergency for paramedics and first aid officers, while the triple two gray indicated a mechanical emergency that required all staff to attend.

“Just pushing the alarm would have had a more rapid response,” she said.

Asked further about her role in coordinating training for staff, as recommended by a 2015 safety audit, Ms Ramsey said she often encountered resistance from management when she requested staff come in early for training.

Ms Ramsey said "budgetary and staffing" issues meant she was often "fobbed off" by management when trying to arrange training sessions.

The inquest continues.