Callide C explosion secrecy beyond a farce as forensic engineer blocked from answering questions
If there was ever any doubt that CS Energy is desperate to prevent the causes of the incident from being made public, Monday’s events in court made it pretty clear.
Forensic engineer Sean Brady has still not completed his long-awaited report into the explosion that crippled Queensland’s Callide C power station three years ago, he did not contribute to CS Energy’s February report on the same incident, and he did not form an early view on how long his investigation would take.
Those are the only three clear answers from almost four hours of Dr Brady’s examination in front of the Federal Court on Monday by lawyers for FTI Consulting’s John Park, appointed by the court in January as a special purpose administrator to the collapsed company that owned half of the power station.
If there was ever any doubt that CS Energy is desperate to prevent the causes of the incident from being made public, Monday’s farce in front of federal court registrar Peter Schmidt made it pretty clear.
Mr Park was given a brief by Justice Roger Derrington to examine the causes of the explosion that crippled the power station, and the causes of the collapse of a cooling tower in 2022.
Dr Brady was hired to do the same job in June 2021, but is still to deliver his report three years later.
But he was prevented on Monday from telling the court why it had taken so long; whether CS Energy or its lawyers had instructed him to go slow on delivering his report; whether he agreed to CS Energy’s own assessment that the failure was the result of a “series of complex events that could not have been anticipated”; or even whether he had spoken to other independent experts about the explosion and, if so, who.
To be clear, the blockage was not of Dr Brady’s making, or his own lawyers, but came from the lawyers advising CS Energy on its own legal position.
The reason is that Dr Brady was not hired by CS Energy to conduct his investigation, but by lawyers for state-owned CS Energy, Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF).
That, according to arguments advanced in court, makes anything associated with the conduct of Dr Brady’s investigation, the report itself – and even the terms of reference he was given – subject to legal professional privilege, and not available to FTI Consulting.
Or to the households and businesses paying higher energy costs as a result of the explosion at Callide C run by taxpayer-owned CS Energy.
The situation is eerily similar to another matter of public interest playing out in the federal court, in which Optus is trying to keep secret a Deloitte report into whether the telco’s failings contributed to the disastrous 2022 cyber security breach that delivered the sensitive details of millions of customers into the hands of hackers.
And on the same arguments, instead of a clear-eyed questioning of Dr Brady about the slow progress of his investigation, and any interim conclusions he might have reached, Monday’s examination instead turned into a farce, in which NRF’s legal brief – Patrick O’Shea KC, one of Queensland’s top barristers – was dispatched to court to object to almost every question asked.
Including, at one point, questions about whether Dr Brady had written comments attributed to him in a CS Energy press release
Whether the claim of privilege can be sustained will be sorted out by Justice Derrington next week, but in the meantime it’s worth reflecting on what CS Energy has said in public.
When CS Energy announced the appointment of Dr Brady in June 2021, then chief executive Andrew Bills said the forensic engineer “has been given the authority to expand its scope based on progressive findings”.
On Monday Dr Brady was prevented from answering questions about that topic, as it might go to the brief of instructions he had been given by Norton Rose Fullbright.
In a press release in July 2021 Mr Bills said Dr Brady and his team had been on site at Callide C, and “we are providing them with whatever support they need to undertake a comprehensive investigation”.
Dr Brady was allowed to confirm he had visited the stricken power station, but lawyers for NRF objected to him answering anything on the second part of the statement – although Dr Brady was eventually allowed to say he wasn’t quite sure what was meant by “support”.
In October 2021, in another press release, Mr Bills said CS Energy would “share the learnings and findings from Dr Brady’s investigation with the power generation industry”.
Dr Brady was allowed to acknowledge he had seen that release at the time and said that, at that point, he had not formed a view about how long his investigation would take.
In CS Energy’s 2022 annual report, published in September of that year, Mr Bills said Dr Brady’s report was “ongoing and is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022”.
In May 2023, on the two-year anniversary of the explosion, acting CS Energy chief executive Andrew Varvari said in a press release that Dr Brady’s “external, independent investigation into the Unit C4 incident was entering its final stages”.
Dr Brady was quoted in that release saying his investigation was “being conducted by a broad range of subject matter experts” and included independent testing.
Lawyers for NRF objected to questions about who those subject matter experts were, and whether Dr Brady wrote those quotes himself – he was eventually allowed to confirm that the quotes were approved by him, but were a modified version of lines initially supplied by someone else.
In CS Energy’s 2023 annual report the company said the Brady report was in its final stages, and in October new CEO Darren Busine reiterated that timing in a public statement.
“As we have stated previously, we are committed to sharing the findings and learnings from the Unit C4 incident with industry to prevent an incident like the C4 event from happening again.”
And then, as CS Energy released its own version of the causes of the incident in February 2024, Mr Busine said “we are eagerly awaiting the completion of Dr Brady’s investigation”.
Which leads to the obvious question immediately asked by lawyers for FTI.
Why haven’t you finished it yet?
And that, yet again, went unanswered after an objection from Mr O’Shea, appearing for Norton Rose Fulbright – the legal advisers to CS Energy.
And why would CS Energy want Dr Brady’s report suppressed, contrary to its own public statements? Go figure.
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