A bill designed to extinguish certain liabilities of the Port of Newcastle, that placed limits and effectively prevented Newcastle’s development as a container port, has been passed by the Australian government’s Upper and Lower Houses.
The New South Wales (NSW) Governor’s signature is now the only thing that stands in the way of the Port of Newcastle being able to build a large container terminal.
Parliamentary Secretary for the Hunter, Taylor Martin, was reported by 2hd to have been in support of the Port of Newcastle (Extinguishment of Liability) Bill 2022.
“Port of Newcastle is the largest coal export terminal in the world,” he said. “It is the backbone of the Hunter economy and a container terminal there will help diversify its operations in the future.”
Independent Lake Macquarie MP Greg Piper is behind the bill which will remove a cap on the port, signed off by the NSW Government and NSW Ports as part of the privatisation deal of nearby Port Botany and Port Kembla.
The cap imposes financial penalties on the Port of Newcastle if it exceeds 50,000 movements per year, thus creating a monopoly of container handles in the NSW state for Port Botany and Port Kembla.
It has since been labelled by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as “anti-competitive”.
