IT was the Newcastle Herald that forced the NSW Coalition government back in 2016 to finally confirm the existence of secret port commitment deeds the government kept hidden from the parliament during the privatisation of the state's major trading ports during 2013 and 2014.
Now, six years later, it's taken the community-first determination of Lake Macquarie Independent MP Greg Piper to bring government and opposition together by tabling a Private Members' Bill that neither side of politics could ignore or - in the end - outright oppose.
Labor's support, with amendments, was not unexpected.
Now, in a genuinely surprising move - given the years of short shrift the Coalition has given to the idea of a Newcastle container terminal - Premier Dominic Perrottet has confirmed the government will also support the bill.
More importantly, the government has come up with a simple, but hopefully effective, commercial framework to turn the legislative intent into practical reality.
An independent valuation will put a new price on the existing $1.75 billion Newcastle lease - this time with an explicit right to build a container terminal.
Once the Newcastle consortium has paid the government the difference - and it will not be cheap - it will have the right to built its terminal, with the compensation to go Botany's owner NSW Ports, which will no longer have the state monopoly it paid $5.07 million for.
NSW Ports also owns Port Kembla - presently designated as the next container terminal, ahead of Newcastle - and has a lot to lose here.
Its response will be instructive, but it's hard to imagine the government making all this public without securing some sort of tacit, or in-principle agreement.
This parliamentary action to remove the Newcastle container handcuffs is long overdue. In joining with Mr Piper and Labor, the government is implicitly accepting that the original deal was as anti-competitive as the ACCC and its other critics said it was, and wrong in principle.
A Newcastle container terminal will ultimately rise or fall on its commercial merits.
With Newcastle's major export, coal, facing an increasingly uncertain future, diversification is crucial. NSW Ports and Port of Newcastle might be competitors, but they are also members of Team NSW.
It's time for them to knock on each other's door, and to agree to expand the state's container capabilities for the benefit of all.
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