Is it really the taxpayer's job to send 11 ambulances every time a coach rolls over on the Bruce Highway?

I was enjoying a rather spectacular macchiato at my club in Sydney when the news crossed my desk. A major incident had occurred in the Whitsundays region at about 4pm on Thursday. A bus carrying 29 people had rolled off the road at the intersection of the Bruce Highway and Rangemore Road at Gumlu.

Naturally, as a man of deep, almost burdensome empathy, my heart went out to the passengers. But my mind—ever the analytical instrument, honed by decades of corporate boardrooms and high-stakes wealth management—went immediately to the logistics of the rescue operation.

According to the reports, the emergency response was nothing short of staggering. Eleven ambulances. Two helicopters. I had to put my cup down, lest my trembling hand spill espresso onto my Italian linen trousers. Eleven ambulances? Two helicopters? For a single coach rollover?

Let us pause for a moment and examine these numbers with the cold, clear light of fiscal prudence. We are talking about 29 people on board. If we subtract the one person who was reportedly trapped beneath the vehicle, and the seven who were seriously injured, we are left with 22 individuals who were merely "hurt."

I do not wish to minimize anyone's discomfort, but "hurt" is a remarkably broad term. I was "hurt" last Tuesday when my regular masseuse at the alpine lodge in Gstaad was unexpectedly replaced by a junior therapist who used entirely the wrong pressure on my lower lumbar. I did not, however, demand that the Swiss government dispatch a fleet of emergency vehicles to extract me from the spa. I simply took a deep breath, finished my cucumber water, and had my personal assistant fire the spa director. That is what we used to call resilience.

Yet, in Queensland, the modern welfare state has apparently decided that any minor inconvenience on our national road network necessitates a military-grade extraction. Eleven ambulances for 29 people is a ratio of nearly one ambulance for every 2.6 passengers. When did we become a nation of such lavish, taxpayer-funded coddling?

If we insist on deploying two highly expensive aviation assets every time someone miscalculates a turn at Gumlu, what incentive is there for citizens to invest in their own robust, privately funded extraction insurance?

The central issue here is the refusal of the modern commuter to price risk into their travel arrangements. It is a matter of public record that the Bruce Highway is widely considered to be one of Australia's most dangerous roads. This is not a secret. It is not classified state intelligence. It is a known variable in the free market of transportation.

When you purchase a ticket to ride on a coach—a vehicle which, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is essentially a communal trough on wheels where strangers are forced to share the same recycled air—you are accepting a certain level of baseline peril. You are looking at the Bruce Highway, acknowledging its reputation for structural hostility, and saying, "Yes, I will traverse this in a top-heavy metal box driven by a man making a modest hourly wage."

I have personally traveled the Bruce Highway. Well, to be perfectly accurate, my driver, Stefan, has traveled the Bruce Highway, while I sat in the back of the customized Range Rover Autobiography doing the Saturday crossword. Did we roll over at Rangemore Road? We did not. Because the Range Rover features an active electronic air suspension system that constantly monitors road conditions, ensuring unparalleled stability even when navigating the most tragic examples of public infrastructure.

If these 29 passengers wanted to ensure they remained upright during their journey through the Whitsundays, they could have simply purchased a luxury SUV equipped with dynamic response technology. Or, better yet, they could have done what my wife and I do when visiting the region: charter a private jet directly into Hamilton Island and take the superyacht from there. It is genuinely baffling to me why people insist on interacting with asphalt at all when the airspace is so delightfully uncluttered.

I discussed this precise phenomenon over a rather exquisite snapper lunch with a senior infrastructure official just last month. He agreed with me entirely, though he noted that his hands were tied by a voting public that has grown addicted to the idea that the government should save them from the consequences of their own budgeting.

He is entirely correct. By wrapping the Bruce Highway in a safety net of eleven idling ambulances and twin rescue choppers, we are actually doing the working class a disservice. We are robbing them of the character-building vigilance that comes from knowing that if you flip your coach in the middle of nowhere, you are entirely on your own.

Danger is a necessary component of a dynamic economy. A perilous highway keeps drivers alert. It weeds out the inattentive. It fosters a rugged, pioneer spirit that made this country great. If we smooth out every pothole and station a trauma team at every intersection, we will produce a generation of soft, mollycoddled travelers who expect the heavens to part and a rescue helicopter to descend every time they get trapped under a 14-ton commercial vehicle.

Let us consider the one individual who was, unfortunately, trapped beneath the bus at Gumlu. A tragedy, to be sure. But surely there is a private-sector solution to this sort of heavy-lifting scenario. A premium subscription service, perhaps, where members can summon a privately contracted crane via a smartphone app in the event of a rollover.

Instead, the burden falls entirely on the state. The taxpayer is forced to foot the bill for the fuel, the medical personnel, the sirens, the bandages, and the sheer administrative headache of coordinating an 11-ambulance convoy.

We must ask ourselves what kind of society we want to leave to our children. Do we want a society where personal responsibility reigns supreme, where individuals carefully assess the risks of the Bruce Highway and secure their own private aerial medevac on retainer before departing? Or do we want a society where 29 people can simply board a bus, roll it into a ditch, and expect the rest of us to pay for the cleanup?

I, for one, am tired of apologizing for the fiscal realities of infrastructure. The next time a coach decides to take a nap on the Bruce Highway, I humbly suggest the passengers pool their resources, hire a local tow truck, and leave the state's helicopters out of it. I might need one of those choppers to get to Gstaad.