Late on Thursday afternoon, counsel assisting the coroner Ken Fleming, QC, put a statement to attractions manager Andrew Fyfe that Dreamworld had not put any money into conducting external safety audits, sparking heated protests from the theme park’s lawyers.

Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi were all killed when the Thunder River Rapids Ride at Dreamworld malfunctioned and the raft they were riding in flipped over into the ride’s conveyor belt.

On Friday morning, Dreamworld’s lawyer Bruce Hodgkinson, SC, rose to highlight documents showing Dreamworld hired a US company at a cost of $30,000 to conduct a full safety audit of the theme park’s rides and attractions in 2013, which included assessing the Thunder River Rapids Ride.

Mr Fleming apologised for his comment made the day before, saying the documents for the safety audit conducted by JAK Leisure Company had “eluded him”.

“If I am wrong I apologise profusely and I withdraw the accusation,” Mr Fleming said.

Tensions within the court have risen over the two-week hearings with the coroner often querying lines of questioning from lawyers who are putting hundreds of questions to each witness.

Coroner James McDougall finally insisted the debate around Dreamworld’s safety audit spending be postponed until the next hearings in November, when Ardent Leisure employees and more external experts are expected to give evidence.

On the final day of the two-week hearings, Dreamworld’s former general manager Troy Margetts, who worked at Dreamworld from 1990 to January 2018, began his evidence.

Mr Margetts said he believed a combination of operator error and a lack of engineering control had caused the fatal tragedy, a view shared by other management staff who previously gave evidence to the inquest.

Asked if he had seen a change in the culture of Dreamworld over the years he worked there, Mr Margetts said there was marked change from the small family business it had been when he began working there to the large-scale public corporation it was when he left.

“With the rapid expansion of the business and changing to being a large organisation, the company’s policies and procedures struggled to keep up with that transition,” Mr Hickey put to Mr Margetts.

“In some instances,” Mr Margetts replied.

Mr Hickey asked if one of the “main stressors” for middle management staff was to balance the demands of the changing corporate structure while keeping the “rank and file” staffers happy.

“Yes, there were challenges with that,” Mr Margetts said.

Asked if there was increasing pressure on middle management roles including his own to “do more with less”, Mr Margetts agreed.

Citing the frequent responses the inquest had heard from Dreamworld staff that different issues were not their responsibility but the responsibility of another department, Mr Hickey asked if Dreamworld’s different departments had become “insular”.

“Correct,” Mr Margetts said.

“So primarily each department was only focused on their own concerns and assumed other departments would take care of the areas they were concerned with,” Mr Hickey said.

Mr Margetts agreed.

Mr Hickey asked what could have been done to fix a "glaring omission" in ride operator training about the two emergency stop buttons at the Thunder River Rapids Ride.

Ride operators gave evidence none of them knew the key differences between the emergency stops - one a nine-second stop button and the other a two-second stop.

"I would suggest better engagement between the engineering team and the attractions team," Mr Margetts replied.

The inquest continues.