Details of the top secret port commitment deed between the state government, NSW Ports and the Port of Newcastle will be revealed in parliament on Thursday.
It comes as new treasury modelling has revealed the privatisation of the state's ports has left the taxpayers saddled with a potential liability of between $600 million and $4.3 billion.
In addition to the Newcastle Port Commitment Deeds, Treasurer Daniel Mookhey will also table other port privatisation contracts and associated deeds in state parliament.
The former Coalition government sold off Port Botany and Port Kembla to NSW Ports in 2013.
The Port of Newcastle was sold off a year later.
The Newcastle Herald revealed in 2016 the secret deeds relating to the Port of Newcastle.
They oblige the government to compensate the lessee, the NSW Ports consortium, if container traffic at the Port of Newcastle exceeds an indexed cap, which began at 30,000 containers annually. The cap presently sits at an estimated 57,000 containers.
Port of Newcastle has never gone close to exceeding the cap but says the cap's existence prevents it from investing in its planned Newcastle Deepwater Container Terminal.
The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is currently working to set what the price of a one-off payment to the state would be, should the Port of Newcastle wish to extinguish that reimbursement provision.
IPART's determination does not affect the Port Commitment Deeds with NSW Ports - the owner of Port Botany and Port Kembla.
In a report commissioned by NSW Treasury, preliminary estimates by Deloitte Access Economics suggest that liability to the government could range between $600 million and $4.3 billion out to the end of the contract in 2063 - should the Newcastle container terminal proceed.
The parliament passed legislation in November 2022 last year to try to resolve a bitter debate over whether the privatisation of the Newcastle, Botany and Kembla ports had imposed unfair or anti-competitive restrictions on Port of Newcastle developing a large container terminal at Mayfield.
Mr Mookhey said it was important for the public to know the details of the port contracts so they could determine if they got a good deal.
"After more than a decade, the people of NSW are finally seeing what the impact of selling off their assets looks like," Mr Mookhey said.
"They shouldn't have had to wait this long to see these contracts. All this government had to do was ask.
"The public deserves to know exactly what is in the agreements made when public assets were privatised.
"The NSW Labor Government promised to end the secrecy and today we're delivering on that promise."
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission unsuccessfully challenged the Newcastle port compensation payments as "illegal and anti-competitive" in a Federal Court case which concluded in 2021.
The full bench of the Federal Court rejected an ACCC appeal in February 2023.
