Editor’s view: $700m Bribie bridge unfunded and totally unnecessary

In scenes scarily reminiscent of Utopia, Steven Miles donned his bomber jacket and dropped $700m on a totally unfunded and totally unnecessary promise, writes The Editor.

Premier Steven Miles would have you believe that public money just grows on trees, based on his totally unfunded and totally unnecessary promise yesterday to duplicate the bridge to Bribie Island at a cost to taxpayers of at least $700m – the equivalent of spending $34,000 on every single resident there.

In scenes scarily reminiscent of those dreamt up by the clever scriptwriters of the ABC television satire Utopia, Mr Miles donned his bomber jacket and headed down the two-lane Bribie Island road to announce a duplication of the bridge – so that four lanes of traffic can cross the Passage at one time.

Where all these cars will come from is anyone’s guess. A study by the state’s Transport Department concluded the existing bridge was suitable for the current traffic load “for the foreseeable future”.

But the politicians were not going to let that awkward fact get in the way of their $700m pork-barrel of the marginal Labor-held seat of Pumicestone, where more than half the voters live on Bribie Island.

Premier Steven Miles.

One explanation provided was that the bridge was needed because traffic volumes on the original one had increased “significantly” since it was built in 1963. The Premier then added, helpfully, that the $700m investment was also justified because if there happened to be a crash on the bridge, the residents of Bribie could be cut off for hours from the mainland. God forbid!

And how does the government plan to pay for this new bridge – having already blamed extreme cost pressures for its decision to deliver a cut-price 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games? No fear. Treasurer Cameron Dick plans to just whack it on the state’s credit card, adding it to his astonishing borrowings bill of $111bn.

And all of this before you even look back at history and remember that at the 2020 state election, this very same Labor government was mocking the state Opposition for promising to spend just $3m on a business case for a new Bribie Bridge – to check if it stacked up.

Then transport minister Mark Bailey said at the time: “The LNP is ignoring expert advice again and promising a bridge they can’t pay for.”

Fast-forward four years and it’s Labor ignoring the experts. You would struggle to make this stuff up.

And yet the team at Utopia did. In fact, these are exactly the types of labyrinthine justifications that the show’s fictional government liaison officer Jim Gibson dances around when talking the public servants at the Nation Building Authority into backing unnecessary proposals that he considers politically important.

“Jim, we don’t need this bridge. All the modelling tells us that traffic volumes do not demand it,” you can almost hear a frustrated NBA CEO – the straight-laced bureaucrat Tony Woodford – replying.

“Welllll,” would come the chirpy reply from Gibson, who is always on the lookout for a “shovel-ready” project – “there’s more traffic on the bridge than there was when it was built 60 years ago isn’t there?”

Woodford: “But we can’t justify building a four-lane bridge that is only serviced by a two-lane road!”

“Ahhh,” Gibson would reply as he thinks, “good point Tony … but hang on, hang on – what if there’s a crash on the bridge? People could be stuck on the island for, what, hours? What if they need urgent hospital care? What if they’re late for a footy game? A bar mitzvah, mits-wah, mits-im-wah … Anyway, good man – I’ll tell the PM you’ve got it under control. New bridge ribbon-cutting here we come eh!”

Originally published as Editor’s view: $700m Bribie bridge unfunded and totally unnecessary