Have Dreamworld executives learned nothing?

FOR the families of victims, the horrific 2016 accident at Dreamworld will live on forever. So why are its executives spending their time nitpicking about semantics, asks Kylie Lang.

LET me ask you this: how would you describe what unfolded at Gold Coast theme park Dreamworld on October 25, 2016, when four people lost their lives?

Terrifying would seem apt, especially if you put yourself in the position of the victims, Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, Roozi Araghi and Cindy Low, and those around them, including Ms Low’s 10-year-old son Kieran and Ms Goodchild’s 12-year-old daughter Ebony.

Imagine the terror these six holiday-makers must have felt when the Thunder River Rapids ride malfunctioned and their raft collided with another raft near a large conveyor belt.

Imagine the terror forever etched in the minds of these two children who watched as their mothers died.

However, in an extraordinary, apparent lack of appreciation of the gravity of what occurred on that warm Spring Tuesday afternoon, Dreamworld’s owner Ardent Leisure has taken umbrage at the media’s coverage of the coronial inquest this week.

Specifically, it has objected to the use of the word “terror”. Forget the irony that the theme park has another ride called the Tower of Terror, one you are expected to enjoy, safely get off and return home from.

It also didn’t like the Thunder River Rapid ride being called a “ticking time bomb”, even though, as the inquest heard, there were more than 15 years of near misses and safety concerns before the 2.05pm disaster in October 2016.

Following the death of four Dreamworld visitors in 2016, the park closed completely for a time. (Pic: Chris Hyde)

Seriously, there are bigger issues at stake here than semantics. Why is Ardent Leisure sweating the small stuff?

Has it learnt nothing since its incredibly inept handling of the disaster almost two years ago?

Remember, this was the company which wanted to reopen Dreamworld just days after the fatalities, while it was still a crime scene, until police intervened. The park remained closed for nearly seven weeks.

This was the company which showed baffling insensitivity when, at its AGM in Sydney two days after the disaster announced executive bonuses.

CEO Deborah Thomas later said she would give her $167,500 annual cash bonus to the Red Cross. Thomas, a former editor-in-chief of The Australian Women’s Weekly, also indicated she had spoken to the victims’ relatives, only to admit after being challenged that this was not the case because she “did not know how to contact them”.

And this was the company whose then chairman Neil Balnaves said the board had wanted the park to reopen within days because it was “better that people get back to work” and “we can’t return the four lives”.

Appallingly, Ardent Leisure’s inability to grasp the magnitude of the Dreamworld disaster continues.

From behind the figurative shield of Sydney-based PR agency Powell Tate and its staffer Emma Dunn, it has accused the media of using “incendiary” language.

Incendiary? How so? If anything, words are woefully inadequate in capturing the fallout for all those involved.

One former Dreamworld first aid officer Shane Green described the accident as being “like a scene from a horror movie.” (Pic: Scott Fletcher)

As former Dreamworld first aid officer Shane Green said one year later, it was “like a scene from a horror movie”, one that “has haunted me relentlessly ever since”.

Ardent Leisure would prefer the media call it simply a “tragedy”, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident”.

Regrettably, this was so much more than a tragedy. People died.

Is it too much to expect the company with responsibility for the theme park to actually take some?

When asked yesterday why Ardent Leisure was quibbling about word choices in the face of such a debacle, Powell Tate’s executive vice president, Jacquelynne Willcox, declined to comment, citing a “respect for the coroner’s procedure”.

Ms Willcox told The Courier-Mail her firm was hired in “August or September last year” but due to a confidentiality agreement she could not disclose the fee it was being paid for issues management advice.

I’d have thought there were far greater issues to manage, like focusing fully on how to ensure such a terrifying turn of events never happens again.