The Neville Bonner Bridge, named after Australia's first Indigenous parliamentarian, will link South Bank with the $3.6 billion Queen's Wharf development. Mr Bonner, from Ipswich, was a conservative Queensland senator from 1971 until 1983 and died in 1999. In 1979 he was named Australian of the Year. Ms Jones said taxpayers did not pay for the Neville Bonner Bridge, which was included as part of Destination Brisbane's winning tender for the $3.6 billion Queen's Wharf Development. It will cost the consortia "somewhere in the order of $100 million", she said. The design means four of the trees at South Bank near the Wheel of Brisbane will be removed to allow the bridge to "land" at South Bank directly in front of the Wheel of Brisbane, Ms Jones confirmed.

Newer trees will replace the old fig trees at a ratio of 6:1, Ms Jones said. Loading Ms Jones said the winning tender would be asked to work closely with Brisbane City Council to minimise any delays to Brisbane's CityCats and ferries during the two-year construction. "Certainly we will be asking all proponents - particularly the one which is successful - is that they minimise the impacts on any other activity in Brisbane," she said. "But this is a long-term investment which is reshaping Brisbane," she said.

Queensland's Performing Arts Complex chief executive John Kotzas said the Neville Bonner Bridge will provide "greater connectivity" between Brisbane's inner-city - including the Queens Wharf development's five hotels - and South Bank's facilities, including QPAC shows. Loading Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Daniel Gschwind said the Neville Bonner Bridge had a "powerful symbolic value" in uniting Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in the heart of Brisbane. Indicative models of the Neville Bonner Bridge show a relatively simple design, featuring what looks like an incomplete "M", and will stand in contrast with the complex structure of the Kurilpa Bridge. When the $63.3 million Kurilpa footbridge was first built, it was described as oversized knitting needles, a mobile magpie deflector and even a dead spider lying on its back.

However, the 425-metre bridge was later hailed a work of engineering genius after it won an Australian Engineering Excellence Award. Ms Jones said construction on the Neville Bonner Bridge would begin in early 2020 and be complete by mid-2022. "We expect that by having this new connection of the Brisbane River, which has been talked about since I first started working on a North Bank document in 2001, this brand new bridge will deliver around 1.4 million additional people, we expect to use the bridge each and every year crossing between, as I said, the north of the river and South Bank," she said. Ms Jones said about 100 labourers, engineers, designers and other workers would work on the bridge. The position of the bridge along the Brisbane River. Credit:Destination Brisbane Consortium

"Once the tender is awarded, the contractor will recruit the next wave of labourers to work on this historic project," she said. "The Neville Bonner Bridge will be the pivotal link between South Bank and Queen's Wharf with 50 new restaurants and bars and a world class retail hub." Ms Jones said the Wheel of Brisbane would continue operating during construction. Stage one of construction for Queen's Wharf's new Waterline Park, Mangrove Walk and Bicentennial Bikeway upgrade between 1 William Street and the Goodwill Bridge have begun.