Initally, few outside of the Hunter seemed too concerned about the secret lease conditions making it all but impossible for Newcastle to have a container terminal, with the general belief being the idea wouldn’t work anyway, so why worry about a piece of obscure paperwork? Now, however, for a variety of reasons, that line of thinking is being challenged, and the consortium that operates the Port of Newcastle has seen enough in many months of investigations to believe that a container terminal can and will work in Newcastle
Initally, few outside of the Hunter seemed too concerned about the secret lease conditions making it all but impossible for Newcastle to have a container terminal, with the general belief being the idea wouldn’t work anyway, so why worry about a piece of obscure paperwork? Now, however, for a variety of reasons, that line of thinking is being challenged, and the consortium that operates the Port of Newcastle has seen enough in many months of investigations to believe that a container terminal can and will work in Newcastle. To help achieve its aims, it’s hired a former shipping industry manager and government policy expert, Craig Carmody, as the port’s new chief executive, with an explicit brief to try to bring a Newcastle container terminal to fruition. Nobody under-estimates the size of the task. Botany’s operator will want to hold on to its monopoly status for as long as possible. The Port of Newcastle is hoping the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will say that the Botany protection is anti-competitive, but as the ACCC waved the privatisations through in the first place, that is by no means a certainty. At the same time, Newcastle has to convince a global shipping industry that there’s enough business to warrant a stop-over when Botany is virtually next door, a little over 80 nautical miles away. Source: The Herald
