PARTY politics dominate our parliamentary systems, but the passing on Thursday night of Greg Piper's Port of Newcastle (Extinguishment of Liability) 2022 Bill shows what can be achieved by a capable and determined Independent MP.
In the initial debate in the Legislative Assembly, the government amended the brief wording of the Bill, and it passed with Labor support.
In the Legislative Council, Labor moved a series of amendments that the Port of Newcastle feared would make things harder than they already were, but with Justin Field of the Greens and Mark Banasiak of the Shooters, Farmers and Fishers Party voting with the government, the ALP's changes were thwarted, and the Bill reverted to the form that it had in the lower house.
Once the legislation receives the assent of the Governor, the Port of Newcastle will have a one-off right to request a "determination of the relevant compensation" - the amount, in other words, that the port will have to pay to overcome the confidential "port commitment deeds" that were part and parcel of the original 2013 and 2014 port privatisations, and which protected Port Botany from competition until 2063.
If this amount, calculated by an independent valuer, is financially viable for the Port of Newcastle, then it will pay the money, and be legally and commercially free to start real work on a business that was first envisaged in the late 1990s when BHP was preparing to close its Newcastle steelworks.
A lot has happened since then, and NSW Ports, which leases Port Botany and Port Kembla, seems implacably opposed to a Newcastle container terminal, and has said it played no part in the proceedings that culminated in Macquarie Street on Thursday night.
Port of Newcastle can presumably go its own way, but it would be much easier if it could come to some sort of working arrangement with NSW Ports.
At one level, this is a commercial battle between rival consortia. But it's so much more than that.
This is - quite literally - about the future health and well-being of this region.
It's about taking this port and this region to a new industrial future beyond coal.
And done competitively, but co-operatively, we can do that while helping the citizens of Botany ease some of their problems.
A rare, but genuine, win-win.
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CURIOUS? Here's a link to the Hansard debate on the Bill
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