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| Floods commissioner Justice Cate Holmes |
THE flood inquiry begins finalising a report crucial to the outcome of the March state election as Commissioner Cate Holmes admits there may be more "oversights" in her year-long investigation.
Justice Holmes - defending her inquiry at the weekend - warned the sort of oversights that led to 10 days of extra hearings might exist in other avenues of her investigations.
After days of torrid cross-examinations and dramatic accusations, the inquiry ended shortly after 5pm on Saturday in a far more conciliatory mood than it started.
Justice Holmes used the last few public minutes of the inquiry to defend her wide-ranging investigations, which in recent weeks have come under heavy fire amid exposures of an accusation of a conflict of interest and accusations of tardiness in detecting inconsistencies.
She made no apology for not wading through every document before the inquiry and conceded other problems could have passed unchecked: "Make no mistake, I do not warrant that the commission has checked that all of what Emergency Management Queensland, the SES, the police, the Bureau of Meteorology, DERM, each of the councils throughout Queensland, or anyone else has told the commission is true and correct."
Justice Holmes said the inquiry was not only about Wivenhoe, but also about a wide range of equally important matters, from swift water rescue to land-planning policy.
The inquiry was not tasked with seeking out wrongdoers, she said, but finding solutions to the problem of flooding.
"This commission was set up to look to how things are managed for the future, which is a sensible approach," she said.
Justice Holmes indicated her gratefulness for the work of (reporter) Hedley Thomas of The Australian, who brought inconsistency in communications of the Wivenhoe Dam engineers to light. She also thanked other "individuals" who may have assisted in identifying the questions which were explored in the past 10 days.
"But it would be a tragedy if the focus on this discrete set of issues led people to lose sight of the rest of the work of the commission because that may mean that things which are designed to improve the safety of lives and property of people in Queensland are pushed aside," Justice Holmes said.
The four dam engineers accused inside the inquiry of fraud and perjury were brought back to finalise the evidence under cross-examination from assisting counsel Peter Callaghan, SC, on Saturday.
The four were accused of mismanaging the Wivenhoe Dam last January by failing to properly apply water release strategies W1 to W4. They were also accused of creating a fraudulent report in March last year to cover their tracks.
Mr Callaghan's questions suggested the inquiry is concentrating not on accusations the engineers ignored the strategies but that they did not fully understand one strategy, W2.
The inquiry reports on March 16, eight days before the state election.
