A Trade Minister signed off a 99-year lease of an Australian port to a Chinese company. The day before he left politics, that same company put him on $880,000 a year.
This one’s been on the public record for years, and it still stops me cold every time.
In 2015, Andrew Robb was the federal Trade Minister. On his watch, the Port of Darwin was leased to Landbridge Group, controlled by Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng, a member of the CPPCC, an advisory body to the Chinese Communist Party. The lease runs 99 years.
On 1 July 2016, the day before the federal election, with Robb on his way out of Parliament, Landbridge began paying him a consultancy worth $880,000 a year. The terms: $73,000 a month for “strategic advice.” No specified deliverables. Thirty days’ notice to end it.
The ministerial standards say a former minister should wait eighteen months before cashing in on their portfolio. Robb waited zero days. He took roughly $2 million from Landbridge before quitting the arrangement in 2019, just ahead of the new foreign-influence register that would have required him to declare it.
I’m not alleging a crime. No crime has been found, and I’m not a court. What I’m pointing at is the structure: the decision in office, the beneficiary, the destination after office, the timing. Lease the port, leave the Parliament, bank the money. All legal. That’s exactly what should worry you.
This is what “legal corruption” looks like in Australia. Not envelopes of cash. A consultancy contract, signed on the way out the door, from the company you just did the favour for.
Cold hard facts. Sourced. Corrected when wrong.
Peter Lyndon-James