A separate 50-year deed, signed in May 2014 when the port was privatised, required the Port of Newcastle to reimburse the State for any compensation it paid to the operators of Port Botany and Port Kembla under the Port Commitment Deeds. That reimbursement would have added materially to the cost of moving every container through Newcastle.

The NSW Parliament removed it. The Port of Newcastle (Extinguishment of Liability) Bill 2022 was introduced on 13 October 2022, passed both houses on 10 November 2022, and received assent on 25 November 2022.

What it removed was the liability, not the cost. The State's own obligation to compensate the Botany and Kembla operators survives. In March 2024 the Premier advised Parliament that a $2.4 billion container terminal at the Port of Newcastle would cost NSW taxpayers up to $4.3 billion in payments to the Port Botany lessee.

So the legislation moved the payment from the port to the public, and the economics of the terminal now run through a state budget rather than a commercial one. As at November 2025 the proposal was reported as delayed, with concerns raised about planning approvals and rail and road connections.

Fourteen years after the first of these deeds, there is no container terminal. And no step in the approval chain explains why.