Darwin port best in local control

In a worsening strategic climate across the Asia-Pacific, most Australians will agree with the commitments by Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese to axe Chinese company Landbridge’s 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin. In October 2023, a review by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet concluded that Australians could have confidence that their security would not be compromised by the lease and that the nation was a competitive destination for foreign investment. The Prime Minister accepted the report. Public attitudes have hardened since then, however, because of China’s regional aggression and its deployment of a flotilla of warships that circumnavigated the continent in February.

The vessels conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea under the busy Australia-New Zealand flight path, forcing 49 planes to divert from their normal courses. Chinese ambassador Xiao Qian said the exercises were “part of the efforts to train, to practise and to rehearse”. More recently, the Chinese “research” (spy) ship Tan Suo Yi Hao made its way around our coast, no doubt brazenly identifying Australia’s submarine ­cables and tracking the best routes and relevant features for Chinese military submarines, as Greg Sheridan wrote.

The Opposition Leader announced in Darwin on Saturday that a Coalition government would reverse the controversial lease to Landbridge by the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party government in 2015 for $507m. The decision was waved through by the Turnbull government, to the annoyance of US president Barack Obama and the Pentagon. The opposition’s preference is to lease the port to a government-approved buyer. It would not permit its lease to any entity controlled by a foreign government. If a private lease cannot be ­secured the commonwealth would use compulsory ­acquisition powers to take over the port.

Not for the first time, Mr Albanese – the Chinese Communist Party’s preferred leader in the election – has fumbled his handling of a sensitive security issue relating to China. On Friday, tipped off about Mr Dutton’s pending announcement, Mr Albanese said Labor was going to do something about the port, without revealing what. But in Monday’s paper Ben Packham reported that Mr Albanese’s claim to have been working on a plan to take the Port of Darwin out of Chinese hands “for some time” had been questioned by the Northern Territory government. NT Treasurer Bill Yan told The Australian the most recent discussions took place early in March, when the federal government advised it was not considering any further action on the acquisition of the port. Mr Yan said the March 6 meeting in Canberra included representatives from the Prime Minister’s Department, Treasury, Finance, Home Affairs and Defence, with the NT government seeking federal support for a joint buyback for about $1.3bn.

As Packham reported in late March, Defence handed responsibility for the monitoring of a suspected Chinese spy ship to the Australian Border Force despite Mr Albanese’s claim that the ADF was on the case. In what Mr Dutton described as a “wet lettuce response”, Mr Albanese said he “would prefer that (the ship) wasn’t there” but the ADF was “monitoring what is happening” in relation to the ship. Confusion arose, too, about the live-fire drills from the flotilla of People’s Liberation Army Navy warships in February. Mr Albanese said China had issued a prior alert about the exercises. But Chief of the Defence Force Admiral David Johnston told Senate estimates the following week that Defence was notified the Chinese were conducting the drills by Airservices Australia, which in turn had received a call from a Virgin Australia pilot.

Mr Dutton, homes affairs spokesman James Paterson and defence spokesman Andrew Hastie have the basis for a strong campaign narrative. And it is time for both political sides to address the future of the Darwin port, with northern Australia becoming far more strategically significant since 2015, and even since October 2023 when the PM&C review allayed concerns about the issue.