Port Container terminal prospects, problems

David Simmons in the Business Chamber helped me as general manager of Newcastle City Council and then lord mayor Greg Heys to negotiate a few concessions from PM John Howard, and to think about better uses of the Mayfield site. One use was containers, raised by BHP’s Greg Cameron before Nathan Tinkler played around with his coal and containers ploy.  The three affected chambers in that agenda, in Newcastle, Wollongong and Western Sydney, are working in very different directions.

I wrote a NSW freight plan called Thinking Logical Logistics for Shipping Australia in 2003, when shipping conferences had pulled out of Adelaide and were disinterested in two costly, close-by Sydney “port calls”. Newcastle was seen by the container people as unlikely and is still fighting that perception. 

The mischief of taxing Newcastle containers and sending the money to the state-owned Botany and Kembla Port Corporation was parallel to then-premier Mike Baird’s father, Bruce’s, 1990 tax on public transport operators in the M2 motorway corridor, in favour of the motorway company.  

Both boosted the value of their privatisation moves. State ownership of Ports Botany and Kembla pushes Newcastle down the queue – Port Kembla is officially second in line to Botany. ACCC might well overturn that levy, which will leave the same old question of whether Newcastle can have a terminal at all.  

Planning minister Anthony Roberts launched the Greater Newcastle Metro Plan 2017 with the words “With smart and deliberate planning, we’ll … carefully coordinate new land use and infrastructure across the city”.  There’s no mention of a container terminal.  Nor is it in the State Freight and Port Plan – nor is Port Kembla’s rail link from Dombarton to Maldon.  There is no regional transport strategy that meets accepted planning standards.

The recent Western Sydney City Deal paradoxically reduces the viability of both of Newcastle’s and Kembla’s access to the Inland Rail Bridge.  This reflects Infrastructure Australia’s and the Grattan Institute’s criticisms of the NSW Government’s poorly-planned and rarely properly assessed projects.  Newcastle will have trouble competing with Port Kembla as its proximity is superior. They have to work together instead of attacking each other. 

The NSW Chamber is strangely silent having had the PM reject its Wollongong rail report.  There are major options which its Newcastle and Wollongong chapters, the ARTC and the Port have not considered.  A proper ports and freight plan has to bring together a state economic and trade strategy with the economics of the Inland Rail, the three main ports, and sensible rail and road projects.  It will increase Newcastle’s chances if pushed through politically-smart avenues.

The NSW Commission of Audit found that “some specific infrastructure projects have been pursued for their own sake with little consideration to their objectives or the outcomes they actually deliver”. It’s not “some” in Newcastle’s case, it’s “all” of Sydney’s as we know.

As in Detroit and even Newcastle when I was there, we need to bring the whole community into a co-operative path –  governments, business chamber, port, ARTC and the council – where that is lacking now.