Morning all. We’re going to follow the fallout from the report into the Hazelwood mine fire released in the Victorian parliament on Tuesday afternoon. The mine’s owner and operator, GDF Suez, gets sharp criticism in the report. My story from last night is here. My overall impression – and I’m reading the report in more detail today – is that there were lots of failures, and successes, and the regulatory regime was weak, and the communication poor, but really, this fire might not ever have taken hold, let alone burned for 45 days so near the town of Morwell, if the company had done what it should have done.

The report says: “The inability of GDF Suez to effectively suppress the Hazelwood mine fire during the initial stages was due in large part to the mine operator being inadequately prepared to manage the fire.”

This fire was foreseeable. It was not a “perfect storm” of hot weather and winds that nobody could have predicted, as the company preferred to characterise it. Fires in the worked-out areas of the mine had broken out before.

“GDF Suez did not conduct a risk assessment in relation to the risk of a fire in the worked-out areas of the mine, despite a recommendation to do so following a fire in the worked-out areas in September 2008,” the report says. In that respect, it fell short of its obligations under occupational health and safety laws.

The company made mistakes, but was it negligent? That’s the question now. Jon Faine on ABC radio 774 was blunt this morning with the company’s manager corporate affairs, Jim Kouts.

Faine asked why wouldn’t the company just negotiate now and pay compensation, and not go through an expensive, long court case, as happened after the Black Saturday bushfires? Kouts, understandably, did not concede the point. He did say the company was sorry for the impacts and had learned lessons. There is a possibility of a class action lawsuit, which might be more likely after yesterday’s report.

To the papers.

The Age has the story on its front page, with the headline “Morwell fire findings – how GDF Suez failed a community”. Darren Gray’s story also highlights the regulatory failures. There were two bodies supposedly doing that job – the earth resources regulation branch of the Department of State Development, Business and Innovation, and the Victorian WorkCover Authority. The agencies “operated in silos”, with each adopting “a narrow reading of the statutory regime underlying their respective areas.” That didn’t help.

The Herald Sun goes for “Ice plague” today as its lead, but also has the mine story on page 1. It too focuses on the company. In the paper, the headline is “Mine chiefs damned”. It includes this quote, which is one of the most damning: “Contrary to suggestions that the Hazelwood mine fire was the perfect storm of events, all of the factors contributing to the ignition and spread of the fire were foreseeable. Yet it appears they were not foreseen.”

The Australian has the story on page seven, with the headline “Inquiry blames miner for 45-day fire”.The report “blasted” GDF Suez for “stripping the mine of basic fire protection infrastructure and failing to appreciate the foreseeable risk posed by nearby bushfires”. It also highlights that regulatory agencies failed in their oversight of the company, which only aimed to meet minimum fire protection requirements.

Politically, Labor is hoping to gain from the fallout from this disaster. This morning the opposition leader, Daniel Andrews, tweeted this:

As for the local paper, the Latrobe Valley Express, it put up a story last night and its full coverage will be in Thursday’s paper – the paper is published twice weekly.

More soon. Wendy Farmer, the president of Voices of the Valley, is writing a piece for us now that she has had time to absorb the report. The initial community response was a little cool, with some hoping the recommendations would be stronger or apportion blame more firmly.

If you live in Morwell, do drop us a line and we’ll be happy to publish your thoughts.