Witnesses who have already given evidence at the Dreamworld coronial inquest may have to be recalled after thousands of pages of new documents were presented to the coroner by the theme park's lawyers.
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The inquest being held on the Gold Coast is investigating what caused the theme park’s Thunder River Rapids Ride to malfunction, killing Sydney mother Cindy Low and Canberra visitors Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi in October 2016.
The additional 1000 documents, totalling thousands of pages, were presented to the coroner on Monday as the inquest resumed, prompting protests from the lawyers representing the four victims’ families.
On Thursday, the inquest was concluded at midday to give the lawyers time to read through the documents, many of which related to other incidents on the Thunder River Rapids Ride and operations around the theme park.
Ken Fleming, QC, counsel assisting the coroner, said the documents were produced as a result of a request from the coroner lodged with Dreamworld’s parent company Ardent Leisure on October 31, 2016 - days after the tragedy.
Mr Fleming criticised Dreamworld for still producing documents relevant to the inquest after nearly two years.
“This is from a very large organisation who were responsible for the ride in which four people have died, the worst tragedy of this sort in the history of theme parks,” Mr Fleming said.
“And two years later we are still asking them, despite the size of the corporation and despite the size of the lawyers acting for them, we still haven’t got the documents that we require.”
Dreamworld’s lawyer Bruce Hodgkinson, SC, said the corporation had conceded on Thursday that the documents were additional papers found while broadening the scope of the document trawl in response to questions raised during the inqest.
Mr Hodgkinson told the coroner on Friday morning that the new documents had been found as Dreamworld’s team expanded their searches from the central corporation databases and hard-drives to employee’s personal databases as well.
Barrister Matthew Hickey, representing the family of Cindy Low, told the coroner on Friday morning he had managed to read through all the documents overnight and found they were “plainly relevant” to witnesses that had already been cross-examined.
Mr Hickey also noted that almost all the PDF documents provided to the inquest on Monday, and the family’s lawyers on Thursday, bore a metadata production date of on or around April 4, 2017.
Mr Hickey said he reserved his right to request coroner James McDougall recall certain witnesses such as senior ride operator Peter Nemeth, who gave evidence in June, maintenance planner Grant Naumann and safety officers Rebecca Ramsey and Shane Green, who gave evidence this week.
Mr Hickey said he and his fellow barristers who represented the families of the four victims were surprised to find out about the documents, some of which included correspondence between the safety officers about “confusion” over changes to emergency procedures.
He said further correspondence to and from Dreamworld electrician John Lossie, about the need for a single emergency stop button at the Thunder River Rapids Ride, was also included in the new documents.
Mr Hodgkinson rejected that there was a need for witnesses to be recalled, saying there had been sufficient cross-examination of the past witnesses over issues raised in the new documents.
Coroner McDougall heard arguments from both sides before deciding to continue the inquest, saying there was little he could do except note the situation in his eventual findings.
The inquest resumed on Friday morning, with Dreamworld attractions supervisor Jennie Knight beginning her evidence.
Emails shown to the inquest between attractions supervisor Jason Johns and former Dreamworld attractions manager Andrew Fyfe detailed a discussion about reducing the emergency stop procedure for the Thunder River Rapids Ride from four buttons to one.
Mr Johns told Mr Fyfe in one email that the possibility of reducing the four-button procedure down to one emergency stop was being investigated.
The steps for ride operators to shut down the ride in an emergency were to press the emergency gate button, press the conveyor stop, press the emergency stop, press the Rapid Ride Alarm button, contact the emergency station, and remove the dispatch isolator key.
Further emails showed that staff wanted to increase the amount of CCTV screens to better monitor the ride.
Procedures were also changed so ride operators had to be in full control of three rafts at a time to limit the risk of rafts banking up at the unload area on the conveyor belt.
Ms Knight was questioned about a memorandum issued on October 18, 2016, which had originally been highlighted in the June hearings.
The memorandum issued a directive to ride operators to only press the emergency stop button on the unload platform - a two-second emergency stop button - when the main operations console could not be reached, or if there was immediate risk to guest or staff safety, ride operating conditions, or damage to the equipment.
Ms Knight said the memorandum was created after discussions between instructors and attractions supervisors highlighted confusion about what the e-stop did - whether it stopped the conveyor, or one pump and the conveyor.
Ride operators questioned at the inquest in June also expressed confusion over what the emergency stop button did.
The inquest continues.
