Suddenly, everyone is talking about ports

<p>Port issues have gone from low profile to centre stage, with a federal-state election-year clash and the <em>Australian</em> printing today (Wednesday, April 11) a photograph of the Newcastle bulker queue on its front page and editorialising on export supply chain matters.</p> <p>In what seems a crescendo of comment, prime minister John Howard seemed to draw some of the sting in Federal Government criticism of the state’s running of ports, saying he did not necessarily seek federal control.</p> <p>"The reality is that our exports are so strong that that is creating the bottleneck," the ABC quoted him as saying.</p> <p>"I don’t think there’s a problem with them being jeopardised.</p> <p>"I would like cooperation to work, we all would, but if cooperation doesn’t work we have to look at some alternative,"</p> <table width="320" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="right" height="221"> <tr> <td width="332" height="10"><div align="center">