By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia said a security review of a 99-year lease held by Chinese company Landbridge on the northern port of Darwin, emerging as a key focus of its defence strategy, found it was “not necessary to vary or cancel the lease”.
In a statement, the prime minister’s department said: “Australians can have confidence that their safety will not be compromised”, and added that monitoring of security arrangements would continue around the northern port.
The 99-year lease of the commercial port to Landbridge was put under scrutiny in 2021 by the Australian government as it boosted foreign investment screening on national security grounds.
The announcement the lease would not be varied or cancelled comes ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Washington next week, and ahead of an expected visit to China this year.
Landbridge won a bidding process in 2015 to operate the port in a deal worth A$506 million ($390 million).
The awarding of the contract to Landbridge by the Northern Territory government came just a few years after the United States posted the first of a rotating group of U.S. Marines in Darwin.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
