As both the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader race to make Darwin Port promises the ABC has spoken to Top End voters about the deal. Will the lease secured by the Country Liberal Party almost a decade ago be front of mind when they cast their ballot?
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00:00Almost a decade on, the Darwin port is once again a federal election issue, and it's something
00:07many local voters still feel strongly about.
00:10We should control our own infrastructure. I don't think it's a good idea that China
00:15should run our infrastructure.
00:17It is important and it should come back to Darwin, or to Australia.
00:21Both sides are saying it shouldn't be done. Well you did it. It's been done. And now we're
00:27saying it shouldn't have been done. It's embarrassing. Utterly embarrassing.
00:31It's a battle of the port pledges. Peter Dutton's commitment to regain control of the asset
00:36follows the PM's impromptu call to ABC Radio Darwin's Drive program on Friday, when he
00:42promised to negotiate a deal to take back the Darwin port.
00:46We will enter into negotiations to do that. That is what we've been doing informally through
00:54potential buyers up to this point already.
00:57The Prime Minister's had three years to act. He pretends on radio last night in a hurried
01:01call late in the afternoon. I don't know what he'd been doing before he got on the phone,
01:06but he was pretty muddled in what he was saying and it was almost incoherent.
01:11The controversy began in 2015 with a deal worth just over half a billion dollars.
01:17Lambridge has been appointed as the operator of the Darwin port for the next 99 years.
01:24At the time, the country Liberal Party government said the port's infrastructure was ailing
01:28and that privatising the publicly owned asset was the best move for the Territory.
01:33And leverage the returns from that investment into other areas of economic advancement.
01:39The move attracted criticism from defence analysts. In a public statement this weekend,
01:44Lambridge says it's an active supporter of the Northern Territory community and again
01:48maintains the port is not for sale.