Hunter bus crash driver Brett Button to face three-day sentence hearing in Newcastle District Court

More than 30 victim impact statements will be read as part of a three-day sentence hearing for Hunter bus crash driver Brett Button beginning on Monday. Here is how the proceedings are expected to unfold.

More than 30 survivors and grieving relatives of victims of the horror Hunter bus crash are expected to read harrowing victim impact statements in front of killer driver Brett Button during a tense and emotional three-day sentence hearing beginning on Monday.

Newcastle District Court Judge Roy Ellis has ordered Button to be at the proceedings in person to listen to the statements – expected to take up the bulk of the hearing – before both prosecutors and his defence team argue the fate of the 59-year-old.

Several of the victim impact statements are expected to be read via audiovisual link, which will be beamed into Newcastle Court 5.1.

Button has pleaded guilty to 10 counts of dangerous driving occasioning death following the horror crash at Greta last year which claimed the lives of 10 wedding guests and injured a further 25 passengers.

The guilty pleas came after the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew 10 counts of manslaughter against Button, who has admitted being affected by an opiate painkiller and boasting to passengers moments before the Linq Buslines coach entered a roundabout on June 11.

Button has been in custody since he pleaded guilty in May.

Brett Button will face a three-day sentence hearing in Newcastle District Court. (File picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper)

Darcy Bulman, Rebecca Mullen, Zachary Bray, Andrew Scott and his wife Lynan Scott, Tori Cowburn, Angus Craig, Nadene McBride, her daughter Kyah McBride and Kyah’s partner Kane Symons were all killed in the tragedy.

Button has also pleaded guilty to nine counts of dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and has admitted to 16 counts of drive furiously in a motor vehicle to cause bodily harm, which he will ask the judge to take into account during sentencing.

Ten people were killed and 25 injured when the bus rolled at a Greta roundabout in June last year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Judge Ellis, one of the state’s most experienced judges with over 20 years on the bench, usually has a practice of bringing down sentences directly after the final oral submissions from the bar table.

Both prosecutors and the defence team, with Button’s high-respected solicitor Chris O’Brien engaging experienced silk Paul Rosser, KC, would have already prepared and submitted extensive written submissions.

Button will be eligible for a 25% discount for his early guilty pleas and although the most serious charges carry a maximum of 10 years in jail, there is expected to be some partial accumulations on the charges when Judge Ellis decides on a head sentence.

The huge interest in the case will see an expected large-media throng watching proceedings from two different court rooms within the Newcastle court complex.

And with limited space in the public gallery of Newcastle Court 5.1, a second courtroom for survivors, relatives and friends has also been allocated.

An agreed statement of facts tells of how passengers later spoke to authorities about Button’s bizarre behaviour during the course of the day, and the boasts he made both en route to the service and moments before the crash.

Experts have detailed how Button, moments after telling passengers “this next part is going to be fun”, was estimated to be travelling at 56.48km/h as he accelerated through the roundabout “falling at the higher end of normal driving and towards aggressive” despite the “tipping threshold” of the bus being just 31km/h.

The document also details how Button was impaired by the prescribed opiate painkiller Tramadol after consuming “substantial amounts” of the drug, in a quantity exceeding the maximum recommended dose.

While Button told officers he had taken 250mg of Tramadol on the day of the crash, a clinical forensic pharmacologist said the blood concentration recorded strongly suggested Button had taken around 400mg of the opioid in the 24 hours prior, the agreed facts state.

The document also detailed how Button had left one bus company because of concerns about his Tramadol use and failed to tell his new employer he was taking it at all.

A non-publication order remains in place banning the identity of some of Button’s relatives, including their names and images.