Chinese conglomerate Landbridge Group will be forced to end its controversial 99 year lease over the strategically significant Port of Darwin no matter which major party wins government.
On Friday afternoon, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese placed an unexpected call to ABC Radio Darwin to unveil his plans to buy back the port if no private buyer could be found and undo a 2015 deal brokered by a former Northern Territory government.
‘We’ve been working on this for some time,’ he said, stressing the importance of getting the Port of Darwin ‘back into Australian hands’.
He confirmed the government had been talking with potential buyers and remained hopeful an Australian superannuation fund may adopt the lease.
The call-in was an apparent bid to pre-empt Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s own plans to wrest back control of the Port.
Mr Dutton had planned to make the announcement on Saturday, including a plan to seize the port if no buyer could be found within six months.
‘If a private lease cannot be facilitated within six months of the process commencing, as a last resort, we will act to acquire the lease interest in the port using the Commonwealth’s compulsory acquisition powers,’ the Coalition wrote in a statement.
It said it ‘would not permit the lease of the port to any entity that is directly or indirectly controlled by a foreign government, including any state-owned enterprise or sovereign wealth fund.’
Landbridge Group will be forced to sell its 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin under a Coalition or Labor government
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government had been developing plans to force the sale of the site ‘for some time’
The 2015 lease of the port, which is considered to be of significant defence and commercial signficance, came under fire from security experts
Landbridge non-executive director Terry O’Connor told Daily Mail Australia it had not been involved in ‘any discussions with the Federal Government concerning our lease agreement’.
‘As previously stated, and confirmed by our owner, the Port is not for sale.
‘Landbridge considers the Port a long-term investment that has reported record operational performance this year. We expect this growth to continue in the future.’
Former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles’ government awarded Landbridge the 99-year lease for $506million in October 2015.
Since it was first announced, the deal has raised concerns among experts in Australia’s national security.
Famously, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was chided by then US President Barack Obama over the leasing arrangement at a 2015 meeting.
Landbridge is owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, but Mr Albanese previously said the private firm is ‘connected very directly’ with Xi Jinping’s Chinese government.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has documented the links between the company’s leadership and Chinese Communist Party.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said his government would seize the site if no buyer could be found within six months
Both Albanese and Dutton would consider taking public control of the site if a private buyer could not be found
When the deal was first announced, Mr Giles said: ‘We have listened very carefully to the concerns of the community and the Parliament.
‘This is evident in the detail of the agreement where all of the Government’s desired safeguards have been delivered.’
At the time, the federal government did not need to give its approval for the deal and was exempt from a formal review by the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB).
Following the deal, a blindsided then-Treasurer Scott Morrison announced a review into laws allowing state and territory governments to sell strategic assets to foreign-owned companies without being subject to federal scrutiny.
A 2023 review of the lease by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet found it was ‘not necessary to vary or cancel the lease’.
It identified a ‘robust regulatory system’ was already in place to ‘manage risks to critical infrastructure, including the Port of Darwin’.
The findings largely aligned with an earlier review by the Department of Defence.
Nonetheless, security concerns have persisted as has been made clear by the attention given to it in the run up to the upcoming federal elections.
Landbridge is owned by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, but the PM previously said the private firm is ‘connected very directly’ with Xi Jinping’s (pictured) Chinese government
On Wednesday, Mr Albanese told reporters he never would have ‘flogged [the port] off in the first place’.
‘We opposed the sale of the Port of Darwin. We opposed it at the time, we thought that was unwise’.
Neither is it the first time Mr Albanese has flirted with the idea of taking action against the lease in a federal election campaign.
In 2022, he criticised the decision and suggested his government may be willing to cancel the lease under foreign veto laws if necessary
