Leasing the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company for 99 years is easily one of the biggest national security blunders in our history.
It happened on the instruction of a conservative Northern Territory government and received the tick of approval from a federal Liberal government, both of which foolishly confused economics with defence and then shrugged off criticism as meaningless.
Why didn’t the federal government assign some of its generous Defence Budget to the most important Western strategic port in the region?
The lease was signed in 2015 for roughly half a billion. In the same year, the Defence Budget was $32.1 billion. By 2030, it will be $100 billion. We wasted $835 million in compensation for the failed French submarine deal after spending $3.4 billion on empty folly.
You’re telling me that none of the geniuses in Canberra could find half a billion for the Port of Darwin?
Labor recently committed $29 billion to the scam of renewable energy.
It is not as if the government is in the habit of being careful with taxpayer money.
Malcolm Turnbull was the Prime Minister. Scott Morrison was the Treasurer. Peter Dutton was the Minister for Immigration. What were you up to, boys – taking a nap?
This error created a bizarre situation where the China-friendly Labor Party and its ‘hansom boy’ leader, Anthony Albanese, have tentatively agitated to re-take the Port of Darwin while the Coalition, which is meant to be more sensible and responsible than Labor, either fought against it or ignored the issue entirely until last week.
There is no reality in which China would allow an Australian company to manage a military-critical port. Or any port. And for good reason. This leaves us stuck in a uniquely dumb situation.
To the frustration of the Australian people, it has taken an arm’s-length election skirmish to salvage the Port of Darwin.
Albanese and Dutton remind me of feuding elderly neighbours who come out under the cover of darkness to trim each other’s hedges in an unkind way or spray weed killer on the roses and then gaslight over coffee – not because they hate each other, but because it is the only way they know how to interact.
Why is the Port of Darwin a campaign issue?
It should not be. The issue is far too sensitive to be tossed around the press headlines in this degrading manner or be exposed in a way that could leave openings for China to exploit.
We are already seeing the Chinese leadership toy with Australia where the communist youth insist that Australia is rightfully theirs. Remember, the internet in China is monitored by the CCP, and yet the ruling party has allowed open conversations about the annexation of Australia using the same reasoning as Tibet, islands in the South China Sea, and Taiwan.
I find it interesting that Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, who had fits about Canadian Billboard Chris’ post, hasn’t sent a takedown order to China about this sort of comment on their social media forums:
‘If barbarians [Westerners] can go there [Australia], why can’t we?’
As for Indigenous Australians, the growing movement of Chinese pan-Asianism does not recognise their existence or sovereignty (so perhaps their activist groups might consider showing a bit more patriotism on Australia Day instead of harping on about tearing down the colony).
All of this makes the actions of former First Minister, Michael Gunner, even more reckless when he said this during his speech to the Australian China Business Council in 2018.
‘It’s friendship. It’s history. It’s blood-ties. Some of the oldest and most respected names in the Northern Territory come from China. Some of our greatest Territory families are Chinese and Aboriginal Chinese … Darwin has had three mayors either born in China or of Chinese descent. Chinese culture and tradition is part of the very fabric of who we are, what made us be, and who we are to become … in the late 1800s, the Chinese outnumbered Europeans here by 7-to-1. Maybe it goes back even further, and some historians suggest … the great Chinese mariners … but perhaps it goes back even earlier still. A picture of a cockatoo has recently emerged in a 13th Century manuscript in Sicily with the suggestion it was gifted into Europe by early Chinese traders.’
Did the former Chief Minister miss the memo detailing how the CCP manipulates and fabricates history to validate modern annexation?
As for the cockatoo, researchers determined it came from New Guinea or Indonesia, not Australia, based on the species.
The Port of Darwin is one of the many examples of a task that should have been handled with finesse during the calm of the government’s normal term in office.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where political parties find it more valuable to create and then exploit situations which have deteriorated into a crisis. They practised with climate change and now they are doing the same with geopolitics, forgetting that one is propaganda and the other ends in war. How their plan works is that once the public has been frightened – but before they assign blame – politicians promise to ‘fix the problem’ if only they are given another chance at the election.
The result? More mistakes. More promises. And around we go.
Both the Labor Party and Coalition should be scorned for this behaviour, not rewarded.
As for Landbridge, the owner of the lease in operation at the Port of Darwin, he has reaffirmed that the port is a long-term investment that is not for sale.
I am with Queensland One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts when he says:
‘The Chinese owner of the Darwin Port says he’s “not interested in selling”. I don’t care what you’re interested in mate, that’s Australia’s most strategic northern port. It belongs to Australia.’
China will fight us on this, which makes me wonder if Albanese and Dutton have prepped their replies and briefed America.
While we should support the urgent restoration of the port to Australian hands, there are follow up questions that both parties should be asked when the waters are calm.
To Peter Dutton we may ask, ‘Why did the federal Liberal government sign off on the lease and then, for two successive terms, do nothing about it?’
To Anthony Albanese we ask, ‘And what have you been doing for the last couple of years? Counting Chinese ships as they lap the continent?’ Albanese himself ruled against interfering with the lease when heading to Beijing, re-tracing the footsteps of Gough Whitlam who, like all Labor Prime Ministers, endures through the memory of his failures.
Both of these parties endangered Australia’s national security and then sat on their hands out of a mixture of embarrassment and cowardice. Now, they are talking tough in the lead-up to the election.
‘It is vital that this piece of critical infrastructure, which is directly opposite the Larrakeyah Defence Precinct, is operated by a trusted, Commonwealth-approved entity,’ said the Liberal Party in a statement.
I wonder if we will ever get an answer as to why all these security reviews (of which there have been many) keep coming back with a nothing to see here result when that is plainly wrong.
China has been acquiring deep water ports around the world as part of their Belt and Road project which governments, including ours, acknowledge as a security threat. That this has been repeatedly overlooked is concerning.
According to the Australian Financial Review:
A month after buying the Port of Darwin, its new Chinese owner Ye Cheng made a surprising admission. In what appeared as an offhand remark, the founder and chairman of the Shandong Landbridge Group sought to link his newly acquired port with China’s global strategic infrastructure strategy. ‘Landbridge has a port in Rizhao [eastern China] and now we have a port in Darwin,’ he told state-owned newsagency Xinhua in November in 2015. ‘This is our involvement in One Belt, One Road.’
In 2019, the then-Labor Chief Minister, Michael Gunner, spoke positively about Darwin being part of China’s Belt and Road project.
‘You only need to look at a map to see the north matters. You only need to look at a map to see that Darwin is the north’s economic and cultural focal point. We are Australia’s gateway to Asia. More than this, we are part of Asia. We are not near Asia, we are in it. We are Australia’s gateway to trade and investment along the Belt and Road. And we are Asia’s gateway, the Belt and Road’s gateway, into the markets and mines of Australia.’
Contrary to what the former First Minister claims, we are in the Pacific, not Asia. We are Australian, not Chinese. And chasing money over cultural integrity is a huge part of what has gone wrong in this country.
China is not standing up at forums inviting foreigners to flood their cities or to buy up their assets. Why? Because that would be dumb and dangerous, the two great Ds that dictate the behaviour of our politicians.
Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
