TREASURY officials repeatedly cited the competition regulator's Botany privatisation court case in "respectfully declining" to answer questions during yesterday's opening sessions of the annual Budget Estimates hearings.
Labor did break through in some queries, as treasury officials acknowledged the department had never modelled the economic impacts of a Newcastle terminal. They also revealed there'd been little if any investigation of what would happen if the ACCC won its court case, which now included the government as a defendant.
It was not the explosive interrogation that Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp had promised, but the answers will be studied and compared with earlier responses as Labor continues its investigation of the Coalition's port privatisations.
Mr Crakanthorp had originally said Labor would question Treasurer Dominic Perrottet directly, but yesterday he said a decision was taken to change tack in the belief that treasury officials could avoid answering questions when it was their turn to face scrutiny from the upper house committee by saying Mr Perrottet had already dealt with the matters.
Labor's Walt Secord and Adam Searle began questioning the table of six treasury officials about the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission case soon after the second of three sessions began at 2pm.
The ACCC began its Federal Court case against the Botany/Kembla operator NSW Ports in December last year, and the answers that treasury officials gave yesterday mirrored statements made earlier in the week to the Newcastle Herald.
They said NSW Ports had brought the NSW government into a cross-claim it had begun against the also-privatised Port of Newcastle, on the grounds that "it was a proper party to the case".
"As a consequence, the court joined the state to the [main] proceedings," one official said.
They said none of the parties was seeking compensation from the government, and the idea of the ACCC winning its case was "very hypothetical".
On that basis, they confirmed they had not put "significant consideration" into the financial and legal implications that might flow from a loss, beyond "monitoring the state of the proceedings".
Having "respectfully declined" to say anything more out of concern it could "prejudice the case", they eventually answered a Labor question by saying they were not aware of any treasury modelling done on a Newcastle terminal.
In an apparent reference to National Party MP John Barilaro's support for the Newcastle terminal, the officials said they had received no representations from "country MPs" and knew nothing of their interest beyond what they had "read in the press".
Afterwards, Mr Crakanthorp said he was stunned that treasury appeared unconcerned about the "extremely serious and potentially costly" ACCC case.
Terminal proponent Greg Cameron said there was no modelling because they didn't want to acknowledge the project's viability.
