Just over a month ago, Bob Katter – the eccentric independent from Far North Queensland – asked Josh Frydenberg, the newly-appointed Minister for Northern Australia, to explain a little-known deal to lease the Port of Darwin.

With his trademark delivery of man caught halfway between tears and hysterical laughter, Katter used Parliament's question time to ask whether the Australian government's decision to allow the sale of public asset, the Port of Darwin, to a Chinese company called Landbridge for $506 million would transform it into a "foreign corporate, unrestrained, monopolistic money machine" that dominated half of Australia's vast northern coastline?