Australia is too car-centric to care though

I think the tide is turning on that. A couple of years ago BCC put out a call for urban planners to share their ideas. Blue sky. Several of the ideas submitted involved removing the Riverside Expressway, and at least one involved keeping it but removing all the cars, replacing with a single bus lane each way, pedestrian/bike paths, and lots of grass and plants.

The plans were then voted on by the wider community, and the third post popular one was "remove the Riverside Expressway without replacement". When it was discussed in Council, the Deputy Mayor laughed it off as ridiculous and refused to engage with it as the serious idea it was. Disappointing, but very much not surprising disrespectful behaviour from the LNP. However, the fact that it was so popular among the nearly 20,000 people who had voted at that point (self-selecting as that subset may have been) is a good sign.