A Queensland quarry-owner blamed for contributing to the deadly Grantham flood didn't concede embankment walls on the site were man-made because he feared unfair media coverage.
But lawyers for Denis Wagner on Monday acknowledged the walls at the quarry were not natural features of the landscape, as they had previously argued during the Grantham Floods Commission of Inquiry.
Residents had blamed the walls bursting for sending volumes of water over the small southeast Queensland town of Grantham on January 10, 2011, where 12 lives were lost.
However, expert evidence throughout the hearings has found neither the quarry nor its walls contributed in any considerable way to the flooding.
Commissioner Walter Sofronoff QC has already indicated he is likely to agree when he hands down his final report on September 30.
"It seems almost certain now the quarry wall had nothing to do with the deaths and with the devastation within Grantham itself," Mr Sofronoff said.
The focus on Monday instead shifted to whether the walls should have been built and who built them, given approval conditions on the quarry's license indicated levee walls weren't to be built at the quarry.
Peter Davis QC representing Mr Wagner and his family told the inquiry the Wagners hadn't admitted the walls were man-made was because they had already been alienated from their community by negative media campaigns.
"The reason a concession was not made in relation to that, quite frankly, was ... as a result of considerations of how the media was reporting things," Mr Davis said.
He detailed several examples, particularly from radio shock jock Alan Jones, where media had blamed the quarry's embankment walls for causing flooding deaths in Grantham, despite the initial Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry finding in 2012 it didn't have an impact.
Mr Davis argued there was no need to find out who made the embankment walls or when they were made because they didn't make a difference to the flooding.
However, counsel assisting Michael Hodge said the commissioner couldn't make a finding "in a vacuum" that the walls were man-made and would have to provide a context.
Tim Tobin, representing residents of west Grantham, also submitted Mr Sofronoff would have to determine whether the conditions not to build a levee wall were breached and whether they were breached to ensure better regulations in the future.
Mr Sofronoff agreed, suggesting authorities should have been more concerned.
"Messing about with things near rivers and creeks can have lots of effects and yet, nobody seems to have cared what happened after that," he said.
"There's more (thought) given to trading hours in liquor stores than to this."
