$60 million drained from Newcastle to Sydney

Over the last seven years, the Newcastle Port Corporation has sent over $60 million to Sydney in the form of so-called dividends and tax equivalents.

If the amount of interest the organisation has paid to Treasury is included, the drain from Newcastle to Sydney is considerable more.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the works required to provide the most effective coast protection measure for Stockton Beach would cost $31.2 million.

That's about half of the Port Corp's drain to Sydney from the last seven years.

Our local state member Jodi McKay should stand up for Newcastle and this money should stay in Newcastle to repair the damage done by these Port activities.

Come on Joe, what do you say to that?



The total was calculated using all available Port Corp Annual Reports found here and here and extracted from the Statement of Cash Flows (numbers below in thousands of dollars).

YEAR DIV TAX EQ TOTAL
0102 9,000 1,999 10,999
0203 9,000 3,347 12,347
0304 3,012 3,322 6,334
0405 2,429 4,858 7,287
0506 3,057 3,682 6,739
0607 6,024 3,264 9,288
0708 3,808 3,429 7,237

Grand total for seven years $60,231,000
Or an average of $8.6 million each year!