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Posted by Allen Newton
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3 October, 2025
PLAYING politics doesn’t fall into Darwin Port, CEO, Peter Dummett’s vocabulary.
Speaking to Daily Cargo News yesterday (3 October), Mr Dummett said he was focused on the running of the port and its new 30-year masterplan and not worrying about political brawls over the port’s 99 year lease to the Chinese-owned company Landbridge.
In spite of concerns by the Liberal and Labor parties about port lease-holder Landbridge’s Chinese ownership, Mr Dummett said they were at the port for the long term.
“I've been here for the long term. I've come here for 14 years. Politics is not a game I like to play. What I've said to my staff from minute one as we went into the federal election lead up was at the end of the day you're here because we have a port to run. Whatever happens in the background as far as we're concerned as business as usual, we stay out of the rhetoric,” Mr Dummett said.
“We grow the team to expand the port and we've done that quite successfully over the last three years.
“This project started just over two years ago and the initial phase was talking to stakeholders. We're talking about industry groups, mining proponents, operators, existing customers and what is their look ahead for their business and from that we accumulated a lot of data. That's gone into a model and out of that model we've come up with some priorities around growth and certainly obviously work very closely with the Northern Territory Government. We've involved them in those discussions.”
Landbridge is not looking for partnerships but development of port infrastructure would depend very much on cost.
“Our view is we're not going to spend a lot of money without a fairly robust business case and depending on what that business case looks like, what funding we need to seek that'll make those decisions on where we go to for that funding.”
The Port believes its role as a strategic northern defence base isn’t always understood.
“One of the little-known facts about Darwin Port is that we are historically one of the busiest defence ports in the country and that's primarily coming about by our strategic location. We have a really good relationship with defence, not only Australian but our allies as well. have the US Marines rotation comes through the port every 12 months. A lot of equipment comes through the port for that.
“We are extremely supportive in major defense exercises such as recently Talisman Sabre, exercise Kakadu with the Navy every two years. We have on average nearly 100 defence-related vessel visits a year and many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cargo that come through the port.
“I sit on the National Board of Ports Australia and we have been mentioned in dispatches through Ports Australia that we are the benchmark port when it comes to defence relationships and we do that because we've done it for a long time and we understand what the needs are.”
Mr Dummett said growth areas for the port included onshore gas. “The Beetaloo Basin has a huge resource down there and the numbers that are coming out of that at the moment and the results coming out of that at the moment are quite promising. There's going to be a lot of equipment and consumables go through the port for that project.
“The mining sector is one where there is an awful lot of potential there for growth through the port and if you look at the master plan phases. We talk about undercover storage for some of those products should they come online. Spoiler alert, we have a fairly significant rainfall up here during the wet season and some of those products that are in the pipeline are not necessarily conducive to open air storage.
“But also let's not forget the offshore oil and gas sector. There's a lot of work going on there as well and there's a lot of vessel movements related to that industry.”
The master plan encompasses the Ford Hill Wharf facility used for naval vessels and cruise ships, both areas where Mr Dummett believes there is room for significant growth.
It as particularly visibe in the cruise industry at the moment.
“I remember pre-COVID our record year for cruise ships was 74 vessels. We were told as we worked with governments and Australian Cruise Association, Cruise Line International, that as cruise re-emerges as an industry, it will be a slow cascade down into the southern hemisphere. The opposite has been the truth.
“Our first full year post the pandemic, we broke our record quite substantially and in the last financial year we did 117 cruise ships. Industry is telling us that the growth there is seen as about 5% per annum year on year, certainly over the next five to 10 years. We have that dedicated facility at Ford Hill Wharf adjacent to the Central Business District which is extremely attractive to cruise.”
The wharf is shared between cruise and defence which Mr Dummett said some people found incongruous.
“I explain to people and I tell them that Cruise gets the priority and that's easy to manage. Easy to manage because Cruise gives us up to three years notice that they will arrive at 0700 on a given date and they do. Defence tell us that they might come next week - when they tell us that we have a look and if we've got a cruise ship booked in we tell them to come the day after or the day before. It’s very easy to manage but the balance is there.”
You can listen to an excerpt of Allen's interview in this week's episode of DCN weekly:
