INFRASTRUCTURE Australia chief executive Romilly Madew saw Stockton's erosion up close and met with city officials on the Port of Newcastle's proposed container terminal during a visit to the city on Friday.
Ms Madew said yesterday that she'd been due in Newcastle for official corporate duties with Destination NSW at the Matilda's Olympic qualifier, and as a co-founder of the Minerva Network, which mentors elite women athletes including Matildas stars Ellie Carpenter and Caitlin Foord.
Ms Madew said she had taken the opportunity to meet with Newcastle lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes and senior council staff to discuss the city's infrastructure list.
This included the John Hunter Hospital extensions and the Newcastle port proposal.
Ms Madew said she met with staff from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment and went to Stockton to look first-hand at the erosion in light of Infrastructure Australia's coastal inundation protection strategy.
READ MORE:Stockton erosion twice as bad as previously thought
She said she met with Keolis Downer and took a return journey on the city light rail, which she described as "very impressive".
Infrastructure Australia was set up by the Rudd government in 2008 to act as an independent arbiter of the country's major infrastructure needs.
Its regular infrastructure priority lists and audits set out broad-ranging "road maps" of major infrastructure needs at a federal and state and territory level.
Cr Nelmes said yesterday that Infrastructure Australia's call for a new deep water port - because no existing Australian port had the capacity to handle a new era of "ultra-large" container ships - was "arguably one of the biggest planning decisions for our city in a decade".
She said the Port of Newcastle's $1.8-billion container terminal proposal could do the job in combination with the long-awaited Hexham to Fassifern rail bypass.
Cr Nelmes said Infrastructure Australia was the most influential of a growing list of independent bodies to recognise the critical need for facilities to handle the new era of container vessels in our east coast ports.
"Quite simply, nation building infrastructure projects don't get a look in for federal funding without the tick of support from Infrastructure Australia," Cr Nelmes said.
She acknowledged, however, the NSW government "handcuffs" on the port, which make a container terminal commercially unviable, would need to be removed before the project could be seriously considered.
As the Newcastle Heraldrevealed in 2016, Botany and Newcastle were privatised in a way that meant Botany was protected for 50 years by contractual arrangements that were never revealed to state parliament at the time.
The Coalition repeatedly denied there were restrictions on the port until the Herald obtained a copy of one of the "port commitment deeds" detailing the restrictions.
At present prices, a container terminal of the size that the Port of Newcastle says it is ready to build would have to pay Port Botany operator NSW Ports more than $100 a container, or more than $200 million a year at its potential capacity of two million containers or TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) a year.
In 2018, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission began legal action against the arrangements, describing them as "unlawful" and "anti-competitive".
As the Herald has recently reported, the case is still before the courts, with hearing dates set down for the end of this year.
Ms Madew said yesterday that Infrastructure Australia was not a funding body, and so could not pay for works to be done.
"We identify problems or opportunities, and then we say they are in the pipeline of national significance, if it's a national issue, and then we look to government or industry to find a solution," Ms Madew said.
She said national priorities, which included the coastal inundation strategy and the need for a deep water port for the new era of container vessels, could be approached through COAG, or the Council of Australian Governments.
She said COAG comprised the prime minister, state and territory leaders and the president of the Australian Local Government Association, giving local government a voice at the table.
While the coastal inundation policy was theoretically being worked through "in advance of" risks from rising sea levels, problem areas such as Stockton and Collaroy on Sydney's northern beaches were already under pressure.
