THE world’s most powerful person, US President Barack Obama has asked Australia to keep the United States in the loop from now on following dismay over the CLP Government’s decision to lease the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company for 99 years.
The Australian Financial Review newspaper reports Mr Obama and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull discussed the issue during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of this week’s APEC Summit in Manila.
The AFR reported there was consternation in Washington about the US not being consulted about the decision to allow a Chinese company with alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army to lease the Port of Darwin.
Mr Obama told Mr Turnbull the US found out about the deal by reading it in the New York Times. Mr Turnbull joked that the President needed to subscribe to the colourful tabloid, The NT News.
During the 90-minute meeting between the leaders in Manila, Mr Obama said he understood Australia’s relationship with China and its role in the region but, according to sources, said Washington should have been given a “heads up about these sorts of things”.
“Let us know next time,” he was quoted as saying.
Mr Obama, who visited Darwin exactly four years ago to announce the repositioning of US marines and military aircraft in Australia’s north, said he remembered the paper for “putting me on the front page with a crocodile”.
The NT News greeted Mr Obama with a front page story offering him crocodile insurance during his visit.
The AFR’s Phillip Coorey and Laura Tingle reported that after revelations of ties between the Chinese company that bought the port, Landbridge Corporation, and the People’s Liberation Army, the deal has sparked a new focus on Chinese investment in critical infrastructure.
Labor and independent Senator Nick Xenophon have this week both flagged the possibility of a Senate inquiry into the purchase of national strategic assets by companies owned by foreign governments.
Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison said late last week the government was ‘acutely aware of the sensitivities regarding foreign investment in strategic national assets and critical infrastructure’ and that the government is assessing options to ‘strengthen the federal government’s ability to protect the national interest in these cases’.
The AFR said Mr Obama and Mr Turnbull both mentioned “regional issues” had been discussed and singled out their common position regarding the threat posed by China to freedom of navigation and maritime rules in the South China Sea.
Richard Armitage, a former United States Deputy Secretary of State, told The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday he had been “stunned” that Australia blindsided the US on the decision.
US officials only heard about the deal last month as they were returning from the annual Australia-US consultations on foreign affairs and defence. Since Mr Obama’s 2011 visit, Darwin has become an important staging post for US Marine deployments in the region in the past three years, the AFR reported.
The port deal has split opinion within the community of defence establishment and defence analysts.
Department of Defence secretary Dennis Richardson has publicly defended the decision, saying Defence did not have any security concerns about the sale of the port to Chinese interests, on the basis that it was a commercial port, not a naval base.
Others say the argument over practicalities of the port overlooks the broader strategic question of China’s ambitions in the region.
Writing for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Strategist blog, analyst Geoff Wade argued “Darwin is intended to be a key link in China’s new 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, providing Chinese access to both the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, as well as to Indonesia and PNG”
“This in turn will facilitate contention for regional and then global primacy with the United States. The PLA sees one of its key roles as being to protect these economic initiatives offshore. The Darwin deal is thus, among other things, a key element in the PRC’s efforts to weaken the Australian alliance with the US. For these reasons there must be great security concerns about the Darwin deal.”
