This entry exists because the project's method would have failed here, and the failure is instructive.

Australia's second-largest coal port has no container terminal. Handed that fact, this database goes looking for the step: a planning approval, an environmental assessment, a Commonwealth permit, a queue. And the approval chain models at 540 days with zero addressable time — no queue, no scheduling wait, nothing recoverable, and nothing that explains anything.

The binding constraint is a contract.

• 2013 — the Port Commitment Deeds, 50-year term, oblige the State of NSW to compensate the operators of Port Botany and Port Kembla if container traffic at the Port of Newcastle exceeds a cap. The ACCC reports the cap as 30,000 TEU per annum, adjusted by an annual growth rate.
• May 2014 — on privatisation, a separate 50-year deed obliges the Port of Newcastle to reimburse the State for any such compensation, which would add materially to the cost of every container.
• 29 June 2021 — Justice Jagot dismisses the ACCC's case in full. The Full Federal Court dismisses the appeal. The arrangement is lawful.
• 25 November 2022 — the Port of Newcastle (Extinguishment of Liability) Act 2022 receives assent, removing the port's reimbursement obligation.
• March 2024 — the Premier advises Parliament that a $2.4 billion terminal would cost NSW taxpayers up to $4.3 billion in payments to NSW Ports.
• November 2025 — the proposal is reported as delayed, with concerns raised about planning approvals and rail and road connections.

The 2022 Act moved the payment; it did not remove it. The port's liability went and the State's survived, so a project that was commercially impossible became fiscally very expensive. A compensation obligation of up to $4.3 billion against a $2.4 billion asset is not a procedural barrier that anyone can streamline.

And none of this is misconduct. A state sold long-term rights and gave the buyer contractual protection for the revenue stream it was selling. The buyer paid for that protection. Two courts tested it. Whatever one thinks of the 2013 decision, the deeds are doing exactly what they were written to do.

What this entry actually recommends is not tearing up the deeds:

1. Publish the competitive-restriction terms of infrastructure privatisations at the time of sale. A 50-year restriction on a competing port's capacity is a public policy decision with a fifty-year life, and it was made in a transaction document.
2. Require an explicit, costed statement of the competition effect before a government grants exclusivity in an asset sale — the same discipline applied to regulatory restrictions on competition, applied to contractual ones.
3. Where a government does choose to buy back a restriction, say what it is buying. The 2022 Act shifted several billion dollars of contingent liability between parties, and the number reached Parliament sixteen months later in answer to a question.

Filed as an idea, because the remaining option — legislating away a term a state sold, a buyer paid for, and a court upheld — would make every future Australian infrastructure privatisation more expensive, and this project is not in a position to weigh that against a container terminal.