We are Gold Coast girls born and bred, spending many happy family days at Dreamworld, so the tragic deaths of four people on a ride we have been on many times, really hit home.
But it is not just because of our coastal connection, it is also because we know the likely terrible truth: that there will be someone to blame.
More News Videos
- Video duration
- 01:30
Theme parks must 'build trust back'
- Video duration
- 00:20
Minister warned about driver shortage
- Video duration
- 01:31
Racist attack on Gold Coast tram
- Video duration
- 01:20
Video shows bus attacker
- Video duration
- 02:23
Bus driver killed in fire attack
- Video duration
- 05:51
Dreamworld family's heartbreak
- Video duration
- 02:33
Dreamworld accident: Ardent Leisure boss fronts media
Theme parks must 'build trust back'
Every ride at every theme park will undergo a safety audit following the death of four people at Dreamworld. Nine News
As lawyers, we regularly help families navigate the process after the devastation of losing loved ones in incidents like the one at Dreamworld and, unfortunately, it may be an avoidable disaster rather than a freak accident.
Often the cases we see have companies with an impeccably written safety policy but when it comes to translating that into action there's an appalling failure to walk the talk. The failure to translate words into action is often a product of poor leadership from the top, and the prioritisation of money over lives.
Investigations too often reveal a culture of poor safety, cost cutting, a lax attitude to things like maintenance, safety inspections and training and sometimes, alarmingly, a blatant flouting of the rules.
It is not just those killed in this tragedy that have been impacted, we feel great sadness for their loved ones who will suffer this pain for the rest of their lives, the Dreamworld employees who witnessed the events, the emergency personnel who attended and the innocent families enjoying a spring day at the fun park.
In a modern workplace that something like this could occur once should be inconceivable. That it could occur two times in a month should be impossible. Regrettably it is not.
We are referring to the recent equally dreadful workplace deaths of two men at a construction site at Eagle Farm in Brisbane. These tragedies pose important questions - who is watching over us at work, who is taking responsibility for making our workplaces safe and is it effective?
Over the past few years workplace health and safety in Queensland has been focussed less on using the "stick" and more about "carrot", that is more enticements to "do better" than real punishments for failures.
With an average of one workplace death in Queensland every week for the past 5 years one has to ask has complacency taken hold?
There is a progressive approach using forward looking safety strategies of self-regulation, allowing employers and industries to keep an eye on themselves, to help make workplaces safer.
It is abundantly clear that this is failing. Australians still aren't making it home after a day on the job or at a theme park.
Unions have continued to raise a number of significant and important concerns about safety, but for industry it seems the key lessons of the past have been forgotten: which are that if you want to ensure that employers and industries truly have a keen focus on safety then you have to ensure they have skin in the game. They need to have something at stake, personally, before it becomes genuinely important to them.
This approach has been abandoned, which has been a serious miscalculation.
There must be zero tolerance for safety breaches. Bring back the stick. Let's put on the agenda national industrial manslaughter laws to make organisations and company directors criminally responsible for deaths.
There is also clearly a need for an independent commission with the appropriate powers to offer proper scrutiny of complaints and to penalise significant and serious breaches.
We want answers and for those responsible to be held accountable. We want to ensure a tragedy like this does not happen again. All Australians should feel safe doing the things we love.
Like this blog? Like the Sisters-in-Law page on Facebook.
Alison and Jillian Barrett are both principals at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers. The Queensland sisters are experienced lawyers and passionate social justice campaigners. Alison juggles motherhood, as well as heading up a major legal practice area. Younger sister Jillian also leads a team of lawyers and sports a double degree in Law and Journalism.