Australian news and politics live: Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton battling over national security

A reporter has asked Mr Dutton how he felt being “snaked” by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his Port of Darwin announcement.

“I think Anthony first called ABC Radio last night - it was incoherent. Anthony should have been better prepared. He’s had three years in preparation to make that phone call. It was a trainwreck interview,” he said.

“I think, if you read the transcript, nobody was any the wiser as to what the Prime Minister’s actually done for three years. That’s the problem. The Prime Minister had three years to sort this out.”

“The intelligence briefings that I’ve had over the course of my time as the Leader of the Opposition indicate the position has only deteriorated,” he said.

“We’ve now seen, of course, the circumnavigating of our country by Chinese naval ships.

“So we need to make sure that we recognise the times in which we live and why it’s important for us to take back this particular asset.

“There are about 100 warships a year - Australian and allied warships - who go through this area. And we need to make sure that, with our partners, we’re able to work constructively and in an environment which is conducive to our national security interests.”

Mr Dutton is talking about the story that broke last night in whch the Coalition had promised to take ownership of the Port of Darwin out of the hands of the Chinese-owned business that controls it.

That announcement was pre-empted by Anthony Albanese who announced Labor would do the same last night.

“I’m pleased to announce today that an elected coalition government will move immediately to secure the Darwin Port and to make sure that we can bring that national asset, that strategic asset, back into Australian ownership or into a model where we have greater assurance about the operator and the way in which the lease operates,” he says.

“There’s been a lot of debate over this issue for a long period of time. It’s clear that a mistake was made many years ago in relation to the lease and the way in which that was undertaken by the then-Territory government. But that is the past, and we need to deal with the strategic circumstances that we face at the moment.”

Follow what he says live here.

While we’re waiting for the Opposition Leader to appear, US President Donald Trump has hit out at his detractors in a seris of posts on Truth Social.

Mr Trump declared “NOW WAS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH” and “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL” in a series of posts.

Read the story in full here.

The Opposition Leader is in Darwin today and will be holding a press conference from ther Hilton Hotel at 9.30am AEDT.

We’ll bring you all the latest from that press conference as it happens.

It’s now looking like more than $US4 trillion has been wiped off the value of US shares in just two days.

That’s a record two-day drop that is now officially worse than what we saw in March 2020 with the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic.

AAP is reporting that investment bank JP Morgan is now forecasting a 60 per cent chance of the global economy entering a recession by year-end, up from 40 per cent previously.

Good morning and welcome to The Nightly’s live coverage of news from Australia and around the world.

Hate to start things off on a grim note but the market carnage that we saw on US President Donald Trump’s self-proclaimed Liberation Day has only worsened overnight.

AAP reports that the S&P 500 plummeted six per cent on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 5.5 per cent and the Nasdaq composite dropped 5.8 per cent.

China also announced retaliatory tariffs overnight. ​​​Here’s that story in case you missed it​​​.

Stay with us as we cover the big news and events happening everywhere throughout the day.