Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has wrongly claimed that an infrastructure package that includes funding for a second port in Darwin has already been legislated, despite the budget bills lapsing when parliament was dissolved on Monday.
Speaking in the Northern Territory on Tuesday, where the Coalition is targeting two Labor-held seats, Joyce was talking up the government’s regional funding commitments, including $2.6bn allocated to the NT through a regional development plan announced on budget night.
This will include $1.5bn to develop the Middle Arm wharf to allow the export of gas, including hydrogen, and critical minerals. The government has also indicated the wharf could in future be used by Defence as an alternative to the Chinese-leased Port of Darwin.
Joyce said the government was taking the idea of developing the NT and making it happen with “real” funding – and that it was “not about” election promises.
“It is about what is actually in the budget. It has been legislated. We’re not playing games with the territory, we are actually doing this,” Joyce said.
“We don’t want to play games with our nation.”
Federal agriculture minister, David Littleproud, also emphasised the Coalition’s budget commitment, saying it was part of $16.5bn in regional infrastructure spending that was a “L-A-W” commitment to grow the northern Australian and national economies.
“We are not running around the country making election promises. This is L-A-W law promises; this is in legislation that we are putting into parliament …
L-A-W commitments that are going to put $16.5bn into northern Australia.”
While the budget supply bill and legislation to enact the cost of living measures passed parliament in the final sitting week, the appropriations bill which includes the infrastructure funding lapsed at the second reading stage, meaning it is yet to pass the House of Representatives.
Littleproud moved to clarify the status of the funding, saying it was the Coalition’s policy and would be legislated if it won government.
“We’ve been prepared to put our commitments in legislation before the parliament. If we remain in government we’ll pass the bill,” he said.
“The question is: will the Labor party support it?”
Joyce said that the Nationals had bargained hard within the Coalition on behalf of the NT because it was in the best interests of the country, and that now it was up to Labor to match the commitment.
“We talked about this two weeks ago, a fortnight ago,” Joyce said. “[Labor] have had two weeks to catch up … to come out and say, ‘We’re not quibbling about this, good idea, we are part of that too and we will do it as well’ – but they haven’t.”
Labor is yet to make clear which projects announced by the Coalition it will support, saying it needs more information before declaring its hand.
Tuesday’s infrastructure announcement follows scrutiny over the long-term lease of the Port of Darwin to Chinese company Landbridge Group in 2015.
The Coalition has so far stopped short of acting to revoke that lease, even amid increasing warnings about its strategic implications. But the Coalition had been widely expected to campaign on additional NT port infrastructure during the election campaign.
On budget night, Joyce, said in a media release that the government would invest $1.5bn in the NT “to build new port infrastructure, such as a wharf, an offloading facility and dredging of the shipping channel, to boost the region’s importing and exporting ability”.
However this was not listed as a line item in the budget papers released that night.
Defence officials played down the defence aspects of the proposal, noting the NT government had been promoting plans for the trade-focused “Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct” for some time.
The NT’s then-Country Liberal party government granted a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin to Landbridge Groupin 2015. The federal government announced a review of the agreement on national security grounds last year.
Foreign minister Marise Payne dismissed a report that Defence’s review had found there were no national security grounds sufficient to recommend a government intervention to overturn the lease. On 1 April, she told Senate estimates the review was “still in process”.
Earlier this month, defence minister, Peter Dutton, was asked whether the planned $1.5bn investment in the NT was an alternative to the Chinese-leased Port of Darwin.
The government was looking “at port development and ways in which we might be able to support through contracts from Defence, for example, the underpinning of a business model,” he said.
“We’ll have more to say about that in due course”.
Guardian Australia has previously reported the government was considering options that went beyond the binary choice of keeping or scrapping the Port of Darwin lease. These could include imposing additional requirements on the operator, Landbridge Group, under critical infrastructure laws.
Landbridge said last year the company had “acquired the lease to Darwin Port in good faith following a transparent process in 2015” and was willing to assist any review.
