At this stage, speculation is unavoidable, because the Federal Court will not release the reasons for its ruling until the various parties have had a chance to argue for protection of confidential material.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims slammed the outcome as a setback for competition, for productivity and for the broader state economy.

Mr Sims, who has led the ACCC since August 2011, has been a vocal critic of the NSW port privatisations, and the confidential provisions that guaranteed the buyer of Botany and Port Kembla decades of freedom from container competition: provisions - it should be remembered - that were only ever belatedly confirmed, after two years of government denials, when the Newcastle Herald obtained sufficient relevant documentation to force the Baird government to acknowledge what had previously been kept from public view.

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The ACCC took a risk in launching this court case in 2018 but would surely not have taken such an aggressive stance - repeatedly and publicly criticising the Coalition for prioritising short-term gain ahead of open competition - had it not been confident of its grounds.

Without published reasons we cannot know why the ACCC has failed. But we can argue that such important decisions of public policy - a matter with a real-world impact on this region - should not be determined by the arcane complexities of the commercial courts.

One simple question lies at the heart of the Newcastle privatisation.

If - as the O'Farrell, Baird and now Berejiklian governments have maintained - a Newcastle container terminal is not commercially viable, why the need to block it with a crippling financial penalty?

With Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government now taking an interest in the matter, that's a question that he and his ministers may well want to ask of their state counterparts.

Cynics may say the federal Coalition has grown suddenly interested in the port on the back of National Party belief it can challenge Labor in the Hunter Region come the next election.

Maybe, but federal intervention into what has until now been effectively a state matter may well help the opposed port operators find enough common ground to move forward. A lot has changed since the ports were privatised in 2013 and 2014.

No government that says it's serious about helping the Hunter Region navigate a successful transition out of the coal era would block such a transformative project as a container terminal, would it?

The steelworks shut almost 22 years ago.

It's time to see a productive use for a site that was regularly described as the nation's most valuable industrial deep-water frontage.

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