Australian news and politics recap, March 10, 2025: Donald Trump, Malcolm Turnbull and ex-cyclone Alfred

We’re wrapping up our live coverage for Monday, March 10.

If you’re just joining us, feel free to scroll through the posts below to recap the day’s news as it happened.

Stay tuned to The Nightly overnight for all the latest breaking news from Australia and around the world, and we’ll back with our rolling live coverage from 7.30am AEDT tomorrow.

Thanks for joining us.

Under questioning from reporters, Mr Burke kept circling back to Mr Dutton.

“We also know that a lot of what Peter Dutton has been writing up and trying to escalate and amplify have been the actions of organised crime, and he’s been behaving in exactly the way that the organised criminals hoped all Australian (would).

“Fortunately, our security agencies kept the facts, kept to the detail, and have now exposed the criminals.”

For context, here is the full story on today’s developments around the caravan story.

Mr Burke also claimed Mr Dutton owed the Australian people an apology.

It seems to be the day for furious tirades.

First it was Trump against Turnbull, now it’s a blast at Peter Dutton from Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

Speaking after police revealed that the suspected terrorism attack using a caravan full of explosives was, in fact, not a terrorism attack at all, Mr Burke took a massive swipe at Mr Dutton in what has become a hugely politiced debate.

He said the “criminal con job” had conned plenty of people.

“The other person, though, who was conned in all of this and whose recklessness has caught up with him today is Peter Dutton,” Mr Burke said.

“Peter Dutton we’ve always known has reckless negativity. It’s how he behaves. His recklessness today has caused him to make claims about national security which are now demonstrably untrue.

“Time and time again, Mr. Dutton without seeking a briefing, simply asserted a large scale planned terrorist attack. That is not what we were dealing with. We were dealing with a criminal con job, and Peter Dutton was one of the people that was conned.”

The Nightly’s Jackson Hewett has written an analysis on where the money is headed globally, amid increasing market uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariff strategy.

If you are one of those investors whose portfolios have been all over the place lately, you might want to have a read.

He’s got information for both the risk-tolerant and the risk-adverse investor.

Read the column in full here.

Police have made an incredible admission in the case surrounding a caravan laden with explosives that was apparently part of an anti-Semitic plot.

If you cast your mind back to January, you’ll recall police were alerted to the presence of a caravan on a rural NSW property in Dural.

It had been discovered by a local, who found explosives inside it and a note with a list of Jewish ‘targets’.

Police at the time said if set off, the explosives inside the caravan could have created a “blast radius” of 40m.

But now, they’re saying ‘not so much’.

The Nightly’s Elisia Seeber reports that Deputy AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett confirmed the incident was a “ essentially, a criminal con job”.

Within hours of the caravan being found, Ms Barrett said any perceived threat was mitigated.

“Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the joint counter-terrorism team believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorist plot, essentially a criminal con job,” she said.

​Read the full story here.​

Meanwhile, the current Prime Minister has had his say on the tariff saga.

Speaking to reporters today in Lismore, he said:

“We’ll continue to engage constructively.

“It is in Australia’s interest, but it’s also in the economic interests of the United States, for Australia to be exempted from tariffs that, of course, just increased prices for the purchaser of those goods.

“The United States enjoys a trade surplus with Australia, and has done so since the Truman presidency.

“We are partners with the United States through our free trade agreement, and will continue to advocate for Australia’s national interests, and I’m engaging as well with the Australian companies or base companies such as Rio Tinto and BlueScope to see a positive outcome will continue to engage constructively.”

So there you have it. Lots of constructive engagement.

Donald Trump’s latest spray at Malcolm Turnbull is the latest twist in a colourful relationship between the two.

Mr Turnbull has spoken at length about his time as PM when he dealt with Mr Trump (during his first term) in a way that he felt was strong and in defence of Australia.

In fairness to the former member for Wentworth, Mr Turnbull did manage to convince Mr Trump at the time to honour an agreement made by his predecesser, Barack Obama, to resettle 1200 refugees in the United States.

You can read the full trancript of that call here.

But Mr Turnbull has repeatedly brought up that conversation since Mr Trump was re-elected.

As recently as November last year, Mr Turnbull gave his advice for Anthony Albanese on how to “stand up to” Mr Trump in an exclusive article for The Nightly.

Today’s comments from the US President clearly show there’s no lingering affection between the two former counterparts.

US President Donald Trump has unleashed an extraordinary spray at former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in a late-night spray on Truth Social.

Mr Trump was responding to Mr Turnbull’s appearance on Bloomberg in the US, where he said Trump’s tariff strategy was playing into China’s hands.

“Trump seems to have a view that America can prosper at the expense of everyone else, but that’s not going to work,” he said.

Mr Trump took issue with his comments.

“Malcolm Turnbull, the former Prime Minister of Australia who was always leading that wonderful country from ‘behind,’ never understood what was going on in China, nor did he have the capacity to do so,” Mr Trump said.

“I always thought he was a weak and ineffective leader and, obviously, Australian’s agreed with me!!!” (sic)

Now to some grim news from New South Wales, with police saying they have found a body in the search for a 34-year-old fisherman swept off the rocks on the South Coast on Friday.

Emergency services were called to a spot about 5km from Boyds Tower at Edrom, south of Eden, on Friday night at 5.10pm.

Police scoured the area for a few hours until fading light forced them to call off the search.

At 10.15am today police divers found a body in Leather Jacket Bay, not far from where the man was last seen.

A NSW police spokesperson said they believed the body was that of the missing 34-year-old.

A report will be prepared for the coroner.

Nationals leader David Littleproud said the Coalition was buoyed by swings in seats along Perth’s outskirts in the WA election result.

“I think there is a contest and there are green shoots,” he told Sky News on Monday.

“I think the question that West Australians will ask themselves once they divorced themselves of the State Election and looked towards the Federal Election is — do they feel better off after three years of Albanese?

“And will they feel better off if Anthony Albanese, Adam Brandt and a merriment of independents are running this country?

“There’s only two choices to be made. A minority Labor government or a Coalition government.”