The former head of safety at Dreamworld parent company Ardent Leisure has begun giving evidence at an inquest into the deaths of four tourists at the park.

November 12, 2018

The former head of safety at Dreamworld parent company Ardent Leisure says deficiencies in the park’s corporate structure were at the heart of its safety issues.

Angus Hutchings is the first Dreamworld official giving evidence at the resumption of the inquest into the deaths of four tourists on a ride at Australia’s biggest theme park.

Cindy Low, Kate Goodchild, her brother Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi died when two rafts on the Thunder River Rapids ride flipped and crashed into each other in October 2016.

Mr Hutchings told the inquest on Monday there were numerous issues with the park’s management hierarchy.

He said the roles and responsibilities for the safety were not clearly defined and reporting mechanisms were not “particularly effective”.

“We all reported to the one CEO and that prompted some siloing activity, which is not ideal,” he said.

“For some risks in the park, everyone thought it was someone else’s responsibility.”

Siloing refers to when several departments or groups don’t share information or knowledge with other individuals or groups in the same organisation.

Mr Hutchings said the problem was further exacerbated in early 2016 after a restructure to the park’s weekly leadership meeting, where operational issues were discussed.

“The general managers were taken out of the senior leadership group and it essentially left a group of 2ICs,” he said.

“So my concern was if I am providing (safety) advice and I am trying to enact change and be proactive then I needed the executives in the room.”

Around the same time Dreamworld’s safety manager, Alex Navarro, left his position to take up a post with Ardent Leisure in the US, leaving Mr Hutchings to fill the job, along with his regular position.

“I was undertaking two jobs at the same time … I wasn’t effective in either role no matter how much time I spent,” he said.

He agreed with the barrister for Cindy Low’s family, Matthew Hickey, that by the time a new Dreamworld safety manager was appointed four months later “things were a little bit off the rails”.

Mr Hutchings said the park’s documentation of safety risks, and the actions that could be taken to reduce them was also poor.

Staff didn’t input all relevant information into the safety database because it was difficult to use, he said.

“In terms of what happened on the day, I feel some kind of engineering control was needed to monitor a stationary raft and to be able to prevent the conveyor continuing to operate whilst a stationary raft was caught up in that area,” he said.

Despite this, Mr Hutchings said safety was a priority at Dreamworld and he regularly attended meetings for an Ardent Leisure board sub-committee from 2010 that dealt purely with safety issues.

“It was always an important topic of conversation,” he said.

However, when counsel assisting the coroner Ken Fleming asked how these safety issues were escalated to the board level, Mr Hutchings did not know.

Funding for the safety department, he said, was also inadequate.

Mr Hutchings was made redundant by Ardent Leisure in July 2018.

The inquest continues.