INVESTIGATION INTO DREAMWORLD TRAGEDY MUST NOT MAKE SCAPEGOATS OUT OF ANYONE

Accidents do happen, but they're not supposed to happen at fun parks. The horrific "incident" at Dreamworld which killed four people on the Wild Rapids ride was most likely an incident, and not an accident, because "most likely" it could have been prevented from ever happening.


No doubt in the coming days and weeks Workplace Health and Safety officers and police will painstakingly piece together exactly what happened at that precise tragic moment when the flume which the victims were seated in for some reason inexplicably flipped.


Judgement should not be passed on Dreamworld's owner, Ardent, just yet. Reportedly just last month an independent inspection of the ride, and its mechanical components, deemed it to be in satisfactory or better order.


However, it's already been corroborated beyond any doubt by representatives of the Australian Workers Union that the "grave safety concerns" which Dreamworld employees expressed via AWU channels about a perceived lack of maintenance of this ride and others were repeatedly ignored and not acted upon at all by Ardent over the past 18 months or so.


Obviously one would imagine that the AWU has all those "complaints" by Dreamworld employees documented. Above all out of this terrible tragedy, it's imperative that the Dreamworld employees assigned to oversee the ride on this tragic day are not made the legal scapegoat for the criminal negligence of "other parties".