Ardent Leisure’s Dreamworld fine the biggest in Queensland workplace history

While the fine imposed on Ardent Leisure for workplace breaches that led to the deaths of four people on Dreamworld’s Thunder River Rapids ride in 2016 has been described as "the largest fine in Queensland history for a workplace tragedy, Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of South Australia, believes it is minor when compared to other corporate penalties.

Speaking following Ardent Leisure being fined $3.6 million for Failure to Comply with Health and Safety Duty, Category 2, under the Queensland Health and Safety Act, in the Southport Magistrates Court on Monday, Professor Sarre, said while the fine was significant in terms of Occupational Health and Safety law breaches, it is substantially less than other corporate penalties, like Westpac's recent $1.3 billion fine for breaching anti-money laundering laws.

Professor Sarre (pictured below) told the ABC “what we tend to find is very, very large, multi-million dollar, or even hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties being given out for Trade Practices breaches, but only small or comparative penalties being exacted where people's lives are at stake, which is an interesting dilemma in itself.

"The Trade Practices legislation for those breaches tends to allow criminal penalties of tens of millions of dollars, whereas the Occupational Health and Safety legislation doesn't have those same maxima, and that's the reason for this fairly low by comparison penalty."

However, Professor Sarre said in terms of workplace safety breaches, which have led to death, Ardent Leisure's $3.6 million fine was historically quite high, noting "if you were to go back and look at what's been handed out in relation to workplace deaths, you would find that this is at the top end of the penalties.

"The fact of the matter is in Australia's negligent corporate history, what we've found is it's not unlikely that sometimes fines for deaths and serious injuries around the country have been as low as $20,000 or $30,000."

He said any change to the maximum amount for a workplace breach penalty would need to be legislated, and this was often only brought about by public pressure, concluding “for a judge, his or her hands are tied if the maximum penalty is only set at $1.5 million per breach and obviously they would take the size and wealth of a company into consideration when making their judgment.”

Ardent Leisure was fined over the deaths of Luke Dorsett, Kate Goodchild, Cindy Low and Roozi Araghi, who were killed while on the Thunder River Rapids ride raft in October 2016.

The maximum penalty for each breach is $1.5 million.

In early August, Ardent Leisure was the recipient of a $70 million financial assistance package from the Queensland Government.