ARDENT MUST COME CLEAN

YESTERDAY was a bad day for a

Gold Coast icon.

It was even worse for the families of four beautiful people who again had to relive the four-year torture of the Thunder River Rapids tragedy at Dreamworld.

Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, Roozbeh Araghi and Cindy Low lost their lives when a pump stopped working for the third time. The water levels dropped and a raft became stuck on a conveyor belt.

What happened to those people — and the unimaginable suffering since by their families, including children — was horrific and unforgiving.

Yesterday, Dreamworld owners Ardent Leisure pleaded guilty to breaching their health and safety duties in relation to the disaster.

The plea came at the theme park giant’s first appearance in the Southport Magistrates Court for three counts of failing to comply with health and safety duty. Ardent is likely to be slugged with penalties of up to $4.5 million.

The tragedy has meant that Dreamworld, like every other stakeholder in the industry, has been forced to bolster safety measures and procedures to ensure it never happens again.

It is obviously too late for the families of the four innocent people who died.

However, it should not be too late for Ardent Leisure to decide both what it and Dreamworld stands for, because at the moment the Gold Coast does not know.

While a tourism mecca like the Glitter Strip wrestles the worst health pandemic in 100 years, an entertainment giant this city has marketed and supported for decades remains closed. Ardent will not say exactly when Dreamworld will reopen. The most accurate account is some time before the spring school holidays.

After talking about a possible September reopening yesterday, an unnamed spokesman then fired: “That is what we are aiming for, albeit the government is making it tricky with all of these restrictions but we remain optimistic.”

Ardent’s position reeks of it doing the sums and deciding it’s best to keep its head down until employees are weaned off federal government’s COVID subsidies such as JobKeeper. Three weeks ago it made 50 positions redundant.

Perhaps that view belongs only to the most ardent cynic.

Either way, Ardent Leisure needs to come clean. What is its future, what is its strategy and how will it repay the immeasurable faith this city showed during great adversity.

The Gold Coast wept openly at the deaths of Kate Goodchild, Luke Dorsett, Roozbeh Araghi and Cindy Low. It was our darkest day.

At the same time the Gold Coast put an arm around Dreamworld knowing hundreds of employees — dads, mums, brother and sisters — had been affected.

Ardent needs to stop abusing that goodwill, get on the front foot, properly honour the families of the fallen and prove to the people of the Gold Coast that they should be proud of what the theme park operator has learned and, most importantly, will instil.