Australia plans to buy back control of its strategic northern port of Darwin from the current Chinese leaseholder, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday.
China’s Landbridge group was granted a 99-year lease on the port in 2015, a widely criticised decision that led to stricter scrutiny of major infrastructure sales.
The port is the closest to Australia’s Asian neighbours and a base for US Marines who rotate in and out of the country.
“We want it to be in Australian hands,” Albanese told public broadcaster ABC radio, describing the port as a “strategic asset”.
The government preferred that an Australian firm acquire the port lease, and it had held informal talks with potential buyers including Australian pension funds, he said.
But it was also prepared to intervene and use taxpayers’ money to make it a state asset.
Albanese, who faces a general election on May 3, said Landbridge had not invested sufficiently in the port to “bring it up to scratch”.
The prime minister said his centre-left Labor Party had long criticised the lease as “short-sighted for economic reasons, but also for national security reasons”.
“You would recall at the time it was criticised by President Obama as well — gave the Australian government a rebuke at the time.”
Then US president Barack Obama reportedly complained Washington had not been told in advance of the deal.
Albanese said he would have “more to say” about the port lease before the election.
His government had said in 2023 it would not cancel Longbridge’s lease after a review into the national security risks found no reason to vary or cancel the agreement.
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