Only determined investigative journalism could burst through Grantham s wall of lies Nick Cater

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1 FEATURES AUSTRALIA Dam busters Only determined investigative journalism could burst through Grantham s wall of lies Nick Cater Nick Cater 1 August 2015 Mostly journalists pick their stories. Occasionally the story picks you. Ever since Lisa Spierling described how she ran for her life with seven children along

2 a railway track to escape a wall of water I have been convinced that the Queensland Floods Commission got it wrong. The killer flood that wrecked the town of Grantham in 2011 was not, as Commissioner Catherine Holmes concluded, a purely natural disaster, caused by what we are now obliged to call a weather event. It was a man-made tragedy triggered by a collapsing quarry wall. Some one has to answer for that. I ve lost count of the number of times I ve jumped the fence at the abandoned Wagners Quarry to examine the crude mound of clay and earth that held back the water for more than an hour. Starting at ground zero the place where it collapsed I walked the path of the torrent on its way to Grantham where it killed 12 people in half an hour. Friends grew tired of my obsession. They questioned understandably how the experts had got it wrong. If the commission had listened to the locals, however, instead of relying on computer modeling, it would have come to a very different conclusion. It feels somewhat surreal to watch Walter Sofronoff, QC, preside over the second flood inquiry, hearing the evidence ignored the first time around. The public hearings are being held in the Gatton Community Centre, five kilometres downstream from Grantham. It was the building where I first met Lisa in November She arrived in dark glasses with a cap pulled over her eyes, carrying an empty fruit carton stuffed with documents. More than one person

3 had told me Lisa was bonkers. As she gave her evidence to the commission this week lucid, perceptive and measured it was clear she was anything but. The phrase investigative journalism has always struck me as tautology. Hunting down evidence is what journalists were put on earth to do. My second favourite book on journalism, Dix Harwood sgetting and Writing News from 1927 quotes a solemn edict thedetroit News once gave to its recruits: Supplying his editors with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the only mission of the reporter. Any man who asks the reporter to deviate from that principle asks that which is dishonest. Journalists truth is derived from scientific observation, not press releases. My favourite book on journalism, naturally, is Waugh s Scoop. I doubt it is taught in the pointless media studies at our universities, but it should be. It contains the best description of a newsroom ever written: neurotic men in shirt sleeves and eye-shades rushed from telephone to tape machines, insulting and betraying one another in conditions of unredeemed squalor. The technology has changed, but the mores remain. The shameful failure of the Fourth Estate to expose the real Grantham story invites despair at the state of modern journalism. When people are let down by the judiciary and politicians it falls on journalists to step up. The Toowoomba

4 Chronicle is a pitiful rag that fetes the Wagner family, the former owners of the quarry, like royalty. TheGatton Star lacks the capacity for serious reporting and the Courier Mail s beat seems to end at Beenleigh. In the end, however, journalism did save the day. My friend Heather Pascoe, formerly at the Australian, pestered me to take up the story. Freelancer Amanda Gearing and I worked together for a time. Channel Nine s Michael Usher and Jo Townsend delivered a forensic report; Sixty Minutes at its best. Hedley Thomas, Australia s most accomplished journalist, was sceptical at first, as was the Australian s Chris Mitchell. Yet it was Mitchell who commissioned the independent hydrology report that made the irresistible case for a new inquiry. Once again the Oz went where others feared to tread. It s unlikely the Sofronoff inquiry would have happened were it not for Alan Jones, the unshakeable champion of unfashionable causes. I had almost given up on a new inquiry when Jones s producer Paul Christenson called to say the boss wanted me back on the show. Queensland! Grantham! A complete cover up! fumed Jones. This was not a normal flood, I told him. What kind of force would push a tree through the wall of a house and drop it in the middle of their living room? I could have asked what kind of flood rips a one-year-old from its exhausted mother s arms. Stacey Keep s account of her attempt to keep her head above water in a raging torrent while clinging to her precious Jessica was told in distressing detail in the coroner s report. I ve never met Stacey or her

5 husband Matthew, but the thought that their loss might have been caused by the collapsing wall is reason enough for a fresh inquiry. Jon Sippell lives across the creek from the quarry and was perhaps the closest witness when the wall burst on. There was a hell of a crash and a bang that lasted 10, 15 seconds, he told the Commission. I saw a demountable office house disappear, pop up above the surface and disappear I remember the pull. I had to stop it from sucking me, pulling me down the drain. Like a few hundred others in Grantham that afternoon, Sippell was living his own private nightmare. The story of the Grantham flood is a parable for our times. Decent, honest, people who earn their living the hard way accumulating dirt under their fingernails were treated shabbily by the crowd who run the joint politicians, the police, public servants and journalists. The residents of Grantham felt either ignored or confused or patronised, Saul Holt, QC, told the inquiry on its opening day. We owe these people an apology. Tom Friend, a loyal XXXX drinker, gave me stick one afternoon for ordering a Coopers Pale Ale. Tommy, I told him, When we get a new inquiry and the truth finally comes out, you and I are going to share a case of this stuff. And

6 what s more, you re going to pay for it. On the opening day of the inquiry, I texted Tommy. Hope you ve got it on chill.