An interesting point which was missed over the whole Darwin Port buy back kerfuffle over the weekend (both parties have pledged to take back the port from a Chinese owned company).

Interesting to hear Dutton say he gave a heads-up to the Chinese embassy of his decision to take back the Port of Darwin. I'm old enough to remember the 2022 election campaign – with the "Manchurian candidate" rhetoric – when he criticised Marles for sending the embassy a speech in advance #auspol

— Daniel Hurst (@danielhurst.bsky.social) 2025-04-06T23:37:48.973Z

Dutton said he had spoken with the Chinese Ambassador about the plan on Friday “out of respect”.

But in 2022, Dutton accused Labor of ‘appeasing’ China after it became public that three years before hand, in 2019, Richard Marles had shared a speech he was delivering in Beijing with the Chinese embassy.

Here is what Dutton had to say then (there was no evidence Marles had given the speech for ‘approval’.

I would never run a speech through the Chinese embassy to get their approval before I spoke,” Mr Dutton said.

“And it shows the culture within the Labor Party, it is not going to keep our country safe… and Penny Wong and Richard Marles and Anthony Albanese out there this week show their naivety, their lack of preparedness to keep our country safe into the future.

“When you talk about border protection or you talk about the defence of our country, they just don’t have the culture within their party, the ability to make tough decisions when they need to be made and to stand up for our country.

“They’re backing China over the United States and that is a shocking mistake.”

And here is what Dutton had to say on the weekend:

This is an important national security issue and we had contact yesterday with the Chinese Ambassador, out of respect, before we made this decision.

I don’t know whether the Prime Minister made a call before he called ABC Radio but we have thought through this process for a long period of time and the Prime Minister jumping on the phone, trying to get in on the announcement that we’ve made today, I think, shows that this Prime Minister is like the fireman who turns up to the fire when the fire has already been extinguished. I mean he’s too late to everything and we’ve made the announcement today because it’s in our national interest and that’s exactly what we’ve done.

Things that make you go MMMMhhhhhhhh