Last week, NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro said it was time to “unpick” the NSW government’s ports privatisation arrangements. He was referring to the deals the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission described as “brazenly anti-competitive”.

Barilaro was responding to the Federal Court’s rejection of the ACCC’s invitation to declare illegal the arrangements the O’Farrell government secretly entered into when it sold Port Botany. The $5.1 billion winning bid for the monopoly public asset came in at twice the amount originally anticipated.