Former trade minister Andrew Robb takes role with Chinese company behind lease of Darwin port

Former trade minister Andrew Robb has accepted a position with the Chinese company behind the Darwin port lease.

Former trade minister Andrew Robb, has taken an advisory position with the Chinese company behind the controversial 99-year lease of the Darwin port. Picture: Kym Smith

Former trade and investment minister Andrew Robb has taken up an advisory position with the Chinese company behind the controversial 99-year lease of the Darwin port, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

Mr Robb, who drove the negotiation of Australia’s free trade agreement with China, has been appointed as special economic adviser to the Landbridge Group, which besides its interest in the Darwin Port, also has coal seam assets in Queensland and interests in real estate and tourism.

A media statement from Landbridge, obtained and translated by the ABC, said Mr Robb had been impressed by the company’s internationalisation.

“Working for Landbridge Group was a wonderful and a pleasing thing and that he wanted to jointly write a wonderful new chapter together with Landbridge,” the statement said.

It praised Mr Robb’s “global vision and global influence”.

Mr Robb, who resigned his seat in February, has already attracted criticism from Labor over his business activities since leaving parliament, having established his own investment consultancy and joined the US investment bank Moelis & Co to focus on deals with China.

Labor’s finance and public administration chairwoman Jenny Mcallister has said these appointments have “the hallmarks of a politician making a private profit from public office”.

Under the Coalition’s ministerial code of conduct, ministers undertake that they will not “take personal advantage of information to which they have had access as a minister, where that information is not generally available to the public”.

They must also undertake that they will not lobby or have business meetings with members of the government or public servants for 18 months after leaving office.

The executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, said he believed Mr Robb needed to explain the nature of his appointment and the role he will be performing.

“It’s definitely cozy. It is appropriate that we get an explanation about when he was approached by the company to take on this role. He has to be very careful to make sure he can explain if there is a conflict of interest or why there isn’t a conflict of interest in this appointment, based on his obvious involvement in the free trade agreement arrangements when he was the minister for trade.”

Mr Jennings was strongly critical of the lease of the Darwin port to the Chinese company, which he believed was the result of a “botched” decision making process within the federal government that overlooked Australia’s strategic interests.

Mr Robb had strongly defended the Landbridge’s $506m investment in the Darwin Port as trade and investment minister, telling parliament late last year that the transaction was in the national interest. “If we do not get foreign capital into this country, we will not develop as we should,” he said.

Mr Robb, who has also taken a position as Gina Rinehart’s representative on the Ten Network board, was not available for comment.