Bus driver set for appeal fate on decades-long sentence
The man behind one of Australia’s deadliest bus crashes is set to learn whether his decades-long prison sentence will be shortened.
Brett Andrew Button, 60, is serving a 32-year prison sentence for causing a crash that killed 10 people and injured 25 others attending a wedding at Greta in the NSW Hunter Valley in June 2023.
He was driving too fast and under the influence of the opioid painkiller Tramadol before his bus overturned.
Button objected to the length of his sentence, and his lawyer argued that some of the 35 charges to which he pleaded guilty were double-counted.
“However disastrous the consequences of the applicant’s dangerous driving were, the total sentence imposed was manifestly unjust and unjust,” Paul Rosser KC wrote in submissions to the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
Button also argued that the sentencing judge erred in finding that the bus driver knew he was under the influence of painkillers and that the tipping point of the bus was only 31 km/h.
The bus driver previously claimed that he did not realize he was affected by the opioid because he had been using it for so long that he had never been affected by it.
The three appeals judges will announce their decision Friday morning.
Director of Public Prosecutions Sally Dowling told the appeal hearing that Button should have known he was under the influence of drugs because he had been sacked from his previous job when his employer discovered he had become addicted.
The bus carrying guests to the wine estate wedding of a couple who grew up in Melbourne overturned and hit a guardrail after entering an elliptical intersection on Singleton Road.
“This next part is going to be fun,” he told passengers before accelerating towards the roundabout and turning before crashing.
Survivors described feeling like they were about to die as the bus crashed sideways into the roadside barrier.
“The feeling of falling sideways and being completely powerless was terrifying,” Jason Junkeer said at Button’s sentencing hearing.
