Chinese Whispers. Broken promises on Port of Darwin buy-back
· Michael West
At the last election both sides of politics promised to return the Port of Darwin to Australian hands. FOI reveals a broken (dumb) promise will become a broken (unfulfilled) promise. Rex Patrick reports.
Dumb and Dumber
Imagine announcing, indeed promising, that you absolutely intend to buy something from a monopoly owner, who has no strong desire to sell.
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During the election campaign both the Opposition and the Government did exactly that.
On April 4 2025 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that a returned Labor government would ensure the Port of Darwin, leased by Landbridge – a subsidiary of the Chinese Shandong Landbridge Group – would be returned to Australian hands.
“Australia needs to own the Port of Darwin,” the prime minister declared.
Albanese rang a Darwin radio station to announce his plans after he got wind that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would, on the next day, announce a Coalition government would return the Port back to local control.
Albanese’s plans centred around a super fund buying out the lease.
Dutton committed to the same things, putting out a press release advising he’d act in the national interest to immediately secure the Port of Darwin by facilitating the return of the Port to an Australian Government-approved operator.
Even though Landbridge wasn’t interested in selling it, everything is for sale if the price is right. Whatever the ‘right price’ was before the announcement, dumb and dumber had just made it pricier.
Politics trumps national interest. Labor wedged over Port of Darwin farce
Compulsory acquisition
Dutton’s plan was to appoint a specialist commercial adviser to work with the Northern Territory Government and officials from the Departments of Treasury, Finance, Defence and Infrastructure to provide advice and engage with potential new operators of the Port.
The Coalition went on to state that “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 only problem is, that’s not possible.
Compulsory powers are available to the Government if it needs to acquire land for building an air force base, or an AUKUS high level radioactive waste facility, or … for another public purpose. A 1984 High Court case (Clunies-Ross v Commonwealth) affirmed that the Government can’t compulsorily acquire property (like your home) just because it doesn’t like an owner and wants to deprive them of it.
Promise going nowhere
Six months after the Albanese Government was returned to power (and on the 10th anniversary of the lease being acquired by Landbridge) MWM sought access under Freedom of Information laws to briefs from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) on advice that’d been provided to Albanese.
Rex Patrick, X
But there was ‘crickets’ from PM&C to the FOI.
They did not respond to the request and only after five months have responded with limited documents under pressure from the Information Commissioner.
The FOI decision is an interesting one. We’ll return to that in a minute.
99 year lease for Landbridge
Prior to November 2015 the Port of Darwin was operated by the Darwin Port Corporation, a business division of the Northern Territory Government.
The port suffered from a lack of investment to deal with growing demand and after the Federal Government declined to assist with funding new infrastructure, and after analysis by numerous consultants, in January 2015 the NT Government launched an exploratory process to gauge the level of national and international private sector interest in taking over the Port of Darwin.
Thirty-three private investors, including Landbridge, registered their interest in leasing the port.
As part of its plans, the NT Government engaged (from early 2014) with the Department of Defence. The dialogued continued and in May 2015 Defence were advised that Landbridge was bidding to lease and operate the port.
In June 2015 Landbridge met with the federal Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) to advance its proposal and then submitted a FIRB application in July 2015. As part of FIRB’s initial work, Treasury consulted Defence which did due diligence and told them there were no concerns.
In September 2015 the FIRB contacted Landbridge and advised them that the purchase of shares in the Port would be exempt from their approval because the asset was owned by the NT Government. State, Territory or local governments were exempt from Foreign Acquisition and Takeover Act approval (that changed after the kerfuffle over the leasing).
In October the NT’s Chief Minister announced that Landbridge was successful in its bid for a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin, for a total price of $506 million.
Landbridge had followed the rules.
2022-23 Review
In June 2022, just after taking office, Albanese announced a review into the decision to lease the Port of Darwin to Landbridge.
The review was carried out by the PM&C and handed to the Prime Minister in March 2023. The review concluded that it was not in the national interest to vary or cancel the lease arrangement.
In August 2023 Albanese accepted the review recommendations and in October 2023 made the review recommendations public.
Back to Dumb and Dumber
Having seen the review and accepted the recommendations made Albanese’s election announcement even dumber. He knew that there was no problem to be solved.
The FOI response revealed that, since the 2025 election, 12 documents on the Port of Darwin have been generated, but they’re all exempt under Section 33(a)(iii) of the FOI Act – disclosure would cause damage to Australia’s international relations.
FOI Schedule of Documents
One can only imagine how many times the word China appears beneath the redacted text.
The Empire strikes back
On January 29 this year the Chinese Ambassador to Australia came out publicly and blasted Albanese on his Port of Darwin plans.
“Over the last 10 years, Landbridge has invested a lot. Starting from last year, the Darwin Port has stopped losing money and started to make money.
“Suddenly we hear the government of Australia wants to take it back,” he said.
“When you’re losing money, you lease it to a foreign country company, and when it has started making money, you want to take it back. That’s not a way to do business.”
Then came the punch line.
“If anything happens, like the port [being taken] back by force or forceful measures, then we have an obligation to take measure to protect the Chinese company’s interest.”
It was a strong message from our largest trading partner: no forced sale, or else!
Negotiating card
The Chinese government was firing a shot across the bow in relation to all Chinese investments. But there’s also a chance it was weighing into price negotiations.
Albanese’s plan was to have an Australian superannuation fund take over ownership. The problem is that Albanese raised the price the moment he made the election promise.
Australian super funds could have invested in the Port of Darwin back in 2015 when the Port was originally up for lease. After all, they have stakes in other larger ports such as Melbourne, Brisbane, Port Botany and Port Kembla. Darwin Port is small scale by comparison. But they chose not to.
Why would they change their minds, especially noting the commercially favourable position Albanese has put Landbridge in. You might hope your own super fund stays clear of a politically driven price-inflated small scale port purchase.
Unless there is some backroom deal, paid for by the taxpayer, it’s hard to see how Albanese won’t reach the end of this term in Government with a promise not kept.
He sabotaged the chances of a sale making a knee jerk reaction out on the hustings.
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