Australia plans to wrest control of a Chinese-owned port in the country’s north after a national election next month as concerns grow over a more assertive Chinese military presence.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton yesterday said he would take immediate action to bring the Port of Darwin under Australian control or into a model that would give greater assurance about the operator within six months if elected.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Friday made a similar commitment.
Photo: Reuters
The Northern Territory government originally approved the 99-year lease of the port to Chinese company Landbridge Group in 2015, a decision criticized by then-US president Barack Obama. Security concerns have since grown after reports the operator was facing financial difficulties and as Chinese warships conducted live-fire exercises in international waters off Australia’s eastern seaboard.
“A mistake was made many years ago in relation to the lease,” Dutton told reporters. “We live in the most precarious period since the end of World War II, since 1945, and I think it’s appropriate that we take the actions that meet the pressures and the concerns and the threats of the time.”
The Port of Darwin is a strategic asset on Australia’s northern coastline and is home to a base for thousands of US marines.
Albanese said the port needed to be in “Australian hands.”
“We will enter into negotiations to do that,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp late on Friday. “That is what we’ve been doing informally through potential buyers up to this point already, and if it reaches a point where the Commonwealth needs to directly intervene, then we’d be prepared to do that.”
When relations between Australia and China deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic, questions were raised over whether the lease was in the long-term national interest.
The Australian Department of Defence was asked to review the agreement in 2021, but two years later a decision was made that there were no national security concerns as a result of the deal.
Federal and territory authorities have been discussing how to deal with uncertainty around the port, since reports first emerged in November last year of Landbridge’s difficulties.
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