The NRMA has just succeeded (Friday 31 August) in finally terminating Nick Whitlam’s yearning for more NRMA members’ cash in the form of legal costs indemnities. This decision means that shareholders can relax knowing that Directors do have some responsibilities in the area. Many members remember where he settled his Channel Nine defamation on undisclosed terms, but still wanted NRMA to pay his costs.

Whitlam was as usual one-eyed about this — the CBD column in the SMH last Friday saying “As the High Court judges noted on Friday, NRMA was expected to pay all the legals, but any benefit or payout would go to Nick”.

Whitlam is selling his Port Kembla pub now so maybe his passion as Chairman of the Port Kembla Ports Corporation for an inland port at Moss Vale has stumbled. This is the inland port where you rail inbound Japanese cars from Port Kembla to Moss Vale, detail them, and then road transport over 60% of them back to their market of Sydney, where you detail them again.

All this so the Government can massively PPP redevelop White Bay and Glebe Island, where the resident groups have massively demonstrated at the March State Election they have no problem with a working harbour and car docks, only with high rise housing and cement terminals.

Mind you, if all else fails Whitlam could always crank up his Dad’s dream – finishing the Maldon-Dombarton line, which would connect the Port to Picton (and back up Moss Vale) and open up major coal mining opportunities together with a housing developers dream – a new region for potentially some 200,000 punters who could use rail to travel to work at the ports.

With Port Kembla only shifting 8% of the coal Newcastle does, the sky is the limit, and you can bet the ALP will stick the environment in the scramble to sell more coal to china.

Whitlam complained recently he wanted more involvement in business but says his reputation is damaged and he can’t get work. Yet the Government has found “tasks” for him to do – he is currently chairman of the Port Kembla Port Corporation, a three-year appointment made by the NSW Carr Labor Government in 2005.

He also sits on two other NSW government-appointed boards: WorkCover Insurance Fund Investment Board, which has $11billion in funds under management, and the Lifetime Care and Support Authority of NSW, a body that supports people who have been injured in car accidents.

Ironically this is the same bloke who wasn’t going to pay homeowners claims in Wollongong and Coffs Harbour after heavy rains caused downhill “floods”. In 1998 he also went to open NRMA Car Repair centres in Wollongong and the smash repair industry went wild.

Whitlam boasts John Della Bosca and Member for Illawarra David Campbell as regulars at his pub, but if he sells up I guess it is back to dinners in Chinese restaurants although I’m not sure how many are up around Picton.