Labor MP calls for Port Darwin to be nationalised

Labor MP Nick Champion says the ‘important’ Port Darwin should be taken off a Chinese company and nationalised.

A Labor

Labor MP Nick Champion has called for the Port of Darwin to be taken off a Chinese company and nationalised.

Mr Champion — deputy chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs and defence committee — told the ABC today the port was too strategically important to still be leased to Chinese company Landridge.

“I think there was not enough consideration of, if you like, the national interest in that particular privatisation of this port,” the South Australian Labor MP told ABC News.

“It’s a very important port because, you know, we have significant defence facilities in the Northern Territory and that’s the part of the world I guess we have to pay a great deal of attention to.

Nick Champion. Picture: Kym Smith

“For those reasons I think that we should look pretty clearly at making sure that that port is in government hands and it’s for those reasons I think it should be nationalised.”

Landridge were awarded a 99-year lease of the Port in 2015 under a $500 million deal.

A recent draft United States congressional bill revealed a total of $US211.5m ($305.9m) had been ­allocated for new “navy military construction” in Darwin.

Labor senate leader Penny Wong told Sky News today that neither US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defence Mark Esper raised the Port’s lease to China in her recent sit-down with them.

“Nick’s entitled to put his views. He’s a backbencher. And this is obviously an issue around which there’s been a range of different views, even in the government,” he told Sky News.

“This isn’t an issue that’s been raised with me in recent times by US counterparts.

“Investment decisions are matters for governments of the day and foreign investment decisions should always be in the national interest.”

Defence Minister Linda Reynolds said the Darwin Port had gone through the appropriate processes.

“My job as Minister for Defence is not to be moved by speculation in the media,” she told ABC radio.

“All foreign investment proposals take national security into account.”