John Elferink said Albanese was silent when port deal was done

A former NT cabinet minister remembers the silence at the time the Darwin Port lease deal was done. Read what happened.

A leading Northern Territory economist has played down possible Chinese anger at the proposed federal intervention into the Darwin Port lease deal, while a former politician involved in the 2015 decision said the facility was “a dog”.

Former NT Attorney-General and senior CLP Cabinet Minister John Elferink said hundreds-of-millions of dollars were required to upgrade the port in the 20-teens - money not available within the Territory’s budget context.

“The thing was a dog,” he said.

“The port had a real demand for infrastructure money to be spent on it.

Former NT Attorney General John Elferink.

“We had inherited a significant Labor debt prior to coming into office which we had promised to reduce, and we had an asset that was underperforming and had difficulty in supporting itself.

“We had the choice of either pumping hundreds-of-millions of taxpayer dollars into an asset that was breaking even at best or, alternatively, we went into the market place to offer it up for sale.

“In that process we managed to get rid of a lodestone around the Territory Government’s neck and pass it onto someone else.”

Mr Elferink said commonwealth agenciesm including the Foreign Investment Review Board and the Department of Defencem were notified and the silence was “deafening” at a political level from Canberra he said.

“Albanese was as silent as everybody else,” he said.

“The thing was never an issue beyond local politics in the Northern Territory until Barack Obama made a comment to Malcolm Turnbull and ever since then this thing has had a life of its own.

“There was no identified security threat in 2015 and, by the way, there still isn’t an identified security threat now.”

CDU academic Rolf Gerritsen

Last week, both major political parties defied the findings of a 2023 Prime Minister and Cabinet Office review into the lease, and said they would seek to end Landbridge’s 99-year Darwin Port lease and find another operator.

Released in October 2023, the review found a robust regulatory system was in place to manage risks, existing monitoring mechanisms were sufficient and it was not necessary to vary or cancel the lease.

CDU Northern Institute Adjunct Professor Rolf Gerritsen said it was unlikely the Chinese government would intervene to strenuously oppose the lease buyback because it would implicate them in the deal in the first place.

“I don’t think the Chinese government will say much, even if they’re unhappy about it, because so it would show their hand that Landbridge is closely linked to the Chinese government,” he said.

“In that sense they’ll probably be grumpy, but say nothing. In a strategic sense, I wonder what sort of an asset it is because it’s pretty stranded, and surrounded by a concentration of our Defence assets like the air force base. It’s not a tenable asset for them in terms of war.”

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman urged Australia to not “overstretch” the concept of national security and to not “politicise” normal business cooperation.

“We urge Australia to provide a fair, non-discriminatory and predictable business environment for Chinese business there,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

While parent company Landbridge is laboring under debt in China, Darwin Port last year returned a profit in excess of $30m. Port operator Landbridge said the asset was not for sale.

Originally published as John Elferink said Albanese was silent when port deal was done