LIVE: Election 2025 – Ultimate Australian political insider makes staggering betrayal claim about how Albo spoiled Dutton’s plans

The key strategic post is owned by the Chinese conglomerate Landbridge Group under a controversial 99 year lease.

‘We’ve been working on this for some time,’ Mr Albanese said, stressing the importance of getting the Port of Darwin ‘back into Australian hands’.

It’s a major decision with colossal geopolitical consequences.

But perhaps of more immediate intrigue was how Mr Albanese was able to scupper Peter Dutton’s own plans to make the announcement.

The Opposition Leader had been on the way to Darwin to make the pledge on Saturday before the PM stole his thunder.

Senior Liberals told Capital Brief that they know exactly which journalist shared the scoop with the Labor camp.

But veteran political insider Nikki Savva (pictured, below) told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday the leak ‘100 per cent’ came from within Liberal HQ.

‘The Dutton camp is pointing fingers at journos saying that they were the ones who leaked it to the other side, which is a big no-no,’ she told the program.

‘But I’m told it wasn’t the journos, that Labor actually got it from someone on the Liberal side.

‘Now, if that’s true, and I’m told it’s 100 per cent right, that it’s not part of any psyching out or mind games, that’s a pretty bad sign for the Dutton camp.’

Ms Savva, a highly regarded journalist of many years’ standing, served as press secretary to former Treasurer Peter Costello under the Howard government.

If anyone knows the true identity of the leaker, you know who to get in touch with…

Monique Ryan has had, by all accounts, an embarrassing start to her campaign for re-election.

Footage of the Kooyong MP’s husband Peter Jordan snatching a poster of her Liberal party challenger made headlines across the country a couple of weeks ago.

Mr Jordan, who refused to give his name when filmed in the petty act, later apologised ‘unreservedly’.

So too did Dr Ryan, but that didn’t help draw a line under the story.

Excruciating footage of the Teal MP refusing to answer questions about the incident in the corridors of Parliament House kept the story trundling along.

And then Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer, whose sign was snatched, got in on the action by printing 200 new posters.

‘Monique, please DO NOT take this sign!’, they were captioned beneath a massive ‘stop’ symbol.

Perhaps seeking some light relief of her own, Dr Ryan tried to engage with a satirical drag Liberal senate candidate, called Belinda Gread (pictured, below).

Ms Gread, the brainchild of drag artist Nic Bedford and a conscious echo of ‘Pauline Pantsdown’, has released a single called ‘More for Me’.

‘The song is about Belinda’s plan for the country, to cut the wasteful and out of control spending on the public service and get Australia BACK ON TRACK!’, an ad for actors states.

‘Side note, this is a piss take of the liberal parties policies, not endorsing them.’

But in a recent Instagram video in character, Ms Gread claimed that the backlash to her music video forced her to defect from the Liberal Party.

Cue Teal MP Monique Ryan trying to get in on the joke by commenting: ‘Join us’.

But Ms Gread was having none of it.

‘No thank you, darling,’ she wrote.

‘Not interested in your fake green agenda!’

Employment Minister Murray Watt has renewed his attacks on the Opposition Leader, this time accusing him of neglecting his traditional support base.

‘Peter Dutton is all over the shop, but still avoiding his home state of Queensland,’ the Queensland Senator said.

‘The leader of the opposition is missing in action, notably in communities where his reckless comments will be felt the hardest.

‘He’s forgotten Queensland, dreaming about moving in to Sydney Harbour.’

‘His attempt to shut down his disastrous work from home ban just proves that he’s reckless, that he’s risky, and you can’t believe a thing that this guy says.’

Mr Dutton did spend some time in Targomindah, around 1,000km west of Brisbane, on Monday last week to pledge $10 million for a new weather radar in outback western Queensland.

The town had been one of the worst-hit areas by recent record-breaking floods, with the town’s population of 200 being forced to flee their homes.

An estimated 150,000 cattle were lost but the true number is feared to be much higher.

Peter Dutton has been doing his damndest to bat away any comparison with Trump.

On Monday morning, he was peppered with questions about how he would reassure voters he would not be a ‘Donald Trump-like’ if elected.

He insisted his focus was on ‘cleaning up Labor’s mess’.

But he was again asked about comparisons with Trump.

‘The policy we’ve adopted is based on John Howard’s formula in government,’ he responded.

‘Labor has promised to fund everything and they will always spend more money than any other party except the Greens,’ he added.

‘Together they will be a disaster for the economy and I want to make sure we get our country a contract which we can do through good economic management and helping Australians lift their standard of living.’

His desire to put some distance between himself and an increasingly unpopular Trump has been a key feature of the first week of the campaign.

These pictures, however, tell a different story…

The Treasurer has said that US tariffs, imposed by Trump last week, will be ‘manageable’.

Mr Chalmers also flagged further rate cuts, possible as much as 0.5 percentage points at the next Reserve bank meeting.

‘I don’t predict or pre-empt those decisions, but the market is certainly now expecting multiple interest rate cuts over the course of the year, beginning in May’, Mr Chalmers told a press conference in Sydney.

The Australian share market plunged by 6.4 per cent during the first 10 minutes amounting to $178billion.

Mr Chalmers accused the Coalition of being an ‘an absolute bin fire of cuts and chaos’.

‘Australia is better placed and better prepared than our peers,’ the Treasurer added.

‘This would be the worst time to risk a change of government, to a Coalition government, which would make wages lower, taxes higher, and who has secret cuts to pay for nuclear reactors.’

Peter Dutton used a photo opportunity at petrol station in Central Adelaide to spruik his promise to cut fuel excise.

The Opposition Leader was behind the wheel of a tanker with the words: ‘Save 25 cents per litre. Vote Liberal’ written across its side.

He joined Boothby candidate Nicolle Flint and posed for the waiting press pack while filling up one of her campaign cars.

It marks the fourth time the Oposition Leader has staged a photo opportunity at a service station, as the he seeks to underline the Coalition’s pledge to lower the price of petrol by 25 cents a litre.

The Opposition Leader batted back the suggestion that the WFH flip-flop could have been avoided by having more women in the shadow cabinet, claiming he had exactly the same number as Labor.

‘Exactly the same number. Some incredible colleagues, not just sitting around that table, but behind me and in our party room as well,’ Mr Dutton told reporters.

‘I think, demonstrated in our policies that we want to help families, we want to help women, young women, and we want to make sure that we can do that in a vibrant economy.’

He insisted that the Coalition was the best party for families doing it tough.

‘So are we going to be a better government for families? Absolutely, because we’ll manage the economy more effectively, and we’ve demonstrated that over time, and we’ll do it again after the next election,’ he added.

The Opposition Leader has again been forced to defend his twin backflips: ending the drive to have all public servants back in the office full-time and also to actively cut the workforce by 41,000.

Instead, the Coalition will support flexible working arrangements and seek to reduce the number of public servants over five years through a hiring freeze and natural attrition.

‘I have apologised for the decision we took in relation to work from home. It only applied to Canberra,’ he told reporters in Adelaide.

‘Labor’s run this scare campaign and I think we bring an end to that today. And we strongly support flexible workplace arrangements.’

Daily Mail Australia broke the ending WFH for public servants story back in January:

Hard-charging Employment Minister Murray Watt is a fan of a colourful image.

He was the frontbencher sent out to hammer Peter Dutton over his decision to fly to Sydney to attend a fundraiser at the harbourside mansion of hospitality mogul Justin Hemmes as Cyclone Alfred barrelled towards the Queensland coast.

Mr Watt (pictured, below) accused the Opposition Leader of ‘filling Liberal Party money bags while his own community was filling sandbags’.

Of course, we later learned that the Prime Minister had attended a fundraiser of his own on the same day.

Now, Mr Watt has taken aim at Mr Dutton’s decision to dump his policy to force public servants back into the office full time with some curious mixed metaphors.

‘This just shows Peter Dutton is all over the shop,’ Mr Watt told ABC’s Radio National.

‘I mean, Peter Dutton is in the process of trying to give himself the worst face lift in Australian history.’

‘But the problem for him is that he can change what he says, but he can’t change who he is.’

The Prime Minister took an opportunity to unload on some Liberal candidates on Monday morning.

He highlighted Benjamin Britton, the Liberal candidate for the NSW seat of Whitlam, who was dumped after claiming the Australian Defence Force need to remove women from frontline roles.

‘This is a part of a part of the takeover of the Liberal Party by the hard right,’ Mr Albanese told reproters in Melbourne.

‘When you look at Alex Antic being number one on the ticket.

He added: ‘(Dutton’s) got his shadow health minister at number two, a woman Anne Ruston … she’s been a senior minister in the government dumped for Alex Antic in South Australia.’

He further claimed that in the WA state election there were ‘all sorts of strange’ Liberal candidates ‘with some very far right views who had to get dumped’.

Mr Albanese may have been referring to James Hall, the former WA Liberal candidate for the seat of Mandurah, who quit after a string of anti-immigration Facebook posts emerged.

You can read more on the Benjamin Britton saga here:

Barnaby Joyce admitted that his wife Vikki Campion was ‘pretty upset’ by the Coalition’s now-dumped WFH policy for public servants.

‘Obviously there was people pretty upset. Vikki was pretty upset, because she works from home,’ Mr Joyce told Sunrise.

‘The sin would’ve been to stick with it and say “No, I’m too proud, I’m not gonna change”.

‘You want to have people who listen to what’s happening out there and go “OK, I get it”.’

Ms Campion met her husband (the pair are pictured below) when she was his communications advisor.

They wed in a country-style ceremony at the family estate in the NSW Northern Tablelands in late 2023.

Ms Campion works as a journalist so would not have been affected by the Coaliton’s former policy of ending WFH for public servants.

The Opposition Leader has not had a good morning.

He was forced to defend the Coalition’s decision to dump their drive to push all public servants back into the office five days a week, while also amending heir policy to cut 41,000 bureaucrats.

‘Well Sarah, that was always the plan, and there would be natural attrition and a hiring freeze,’ Mr Dutton told the Today.

‘Hey Peter, I’m sorry,’ host Sarah Abo cut hin.

‘I’m struggling to keep up, you’re saying it was always the plan, but it wasn’t the plan. You wanted to cut back 41,000 jobs … how can they have both always been the plan? It doesn’t make sense.’

A visibly frustrated Mr Dutton insisted there was no change to the costing.

‘There’s no change to the costing at all because the original plan of the natural attrition and freezing was what we’d always had,’ he responded,

‘It’s the way in which Labor’s contorted that into something else.’

Mr Dutton accused the Prime Minister of whipping up a scare campaign over their WFH policy.

But he admitted the Coalition had ‘made a mistake’.

‘We’re listening to what people have to say. We made a mistake in relation to the policy,’ Mr Dutton told the program.

‘We’ve apologised for that and we’ve dealt with it. But we’re not going to be framed up by a prime minister who’s got a real problem with the truth.’

Watch the tense exchange below: