Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed discussions with local emergency services about fixing the Bruce Highway occurred as far back as 2009, when the current Prime Minister was the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport.
The revelation has come in the immediate aftermath of the announcement that $9 billion would be put towards upgrading the most unsafe parts of the crucial arterial to be in line with the quality of comparable highways in Victoria and NSW.
Calls to ‘Fix the Bruce’ have continued to grow louder over the years, with key stakeholders including the Queensland Trucking Association and RACQ lending their voices to the discussion as part of the ‘Fix the Bruce’ campaign in recent months.
At a press conference to discuss the funding, Albanese stood shoulder to shoulder with Gympie Officer in Charge of the Queensland Ambulance Service Wayne Sachs, who he discussed the state of the highway with back in 2009.
“Wayne Sachs is an ambo who came to see me way back in February 2009 at Parliament House to talk to me firsthand about his experience of attending accidents on the Bruce Highway,” Albanese says. “Accidents which, all too often, resulted in fatalities or serious injuries.
“When Wayne came to see me at the time he spoke with extraordinary passion, and anyone with a heart would have responded to it.
“The Bruce Highway is 42 per cent longer than the Pacific Highway and it services 62 per cent of Queenslanders … [there were] 41 fatalities on the Bruce Highway in 2024, there’s been two fatalities already this year.
“That’s why this is a priority.”
That 2009 discussion between Sachs and the federal government helped result in the commencement of construction on the Cooroy to Curra, the final section of which – the Gympie Bypass – only completed construction in 2014.
All four sections of the Cooroy to Curra project cost a combined $2.549 billion.
Sachs, who has been an ambo for 50 years, says the positive results on the safety of road users in the region have been felt as that project continued to progress.
“It has done is literally save hundreds and hundreds of lives,” Sachs says.
“I can remember on section B of the Cooroy to Curra stretch, the work started there first because in a 10-month period there were 54 people killed on that one, little section.
“That’s not including the people who suffered serious injury.
“Since this has been done, since this bypassing of Gympie from Cooroy to Curra, fatalities have basically stopped.
“You might get the odd bingle here or there, but basically the fatalities have stopped, and it’s saved countless and countless lives.
“It’s a lot of money but by God it’s worth it. You can’t put a price on lives.”
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