It was Carpenter's Labor gov that awarded the Oakajee project to...

It was Carpenter's Labor gov that awarded the Oakajee project to Murchison Metals/Mitsubishi consortium over the Yilgarn/ Sino team.
Most analysts at the time thought Labor made a mistake in not going with the Yilgarn bid. Labor chose the Japanese backed bid because they didn't want China to own the port, rail and iron ore projects. They considered China would have a monopoly so awarded the port and rail project to the Japanese, which meant the chances of Oakajee ever being built were diminished.

Mitsubishi bought out Murchison so then owned the Jack Hills project and the rights to build the port and rail but kept baulking at stumping up the cash.

This led Padbury to buy the IP from the failed Yilgarn team for around $2.25m as a back up plan in case the gov of the day removed Mitsubishi's exclusive right to
build Oakajee. This was during the Quinn/ Stokes period, and may yet be a wise decision, though whether it can ever erase the $6b funding fiasco stain remains to be seen.

Barnett tried to get the chinese to work with Mitsubishi but had no success. Had he given the right to build Oakajee to the chinese instead of trying to entice china to work with japan (which was never going to happen) then Oakajee would most probably be an operational port now and allowed the mid-west to flourish.

It seems he was reluctant to upset Japan in case it hurt trade relations with them as they were the second biggest trading partner for WA.

I guess there was more at stake politically to this mess than is evident at first glance.