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Lambie asked whether Albanese or Dutton better suited to engage with Trump

Jacqui Lambie took a final question on who is better at dealing with Donald Trump – Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton – but suggested this line of questioning was unhelpful:

Look, I don’t think you can – we can run this line [of] ‘who’s going to deal with Trump better’ … I don’t think that putting those men up against each other on who’s going to deal better with Trump is actually helpful this morning.

And quite frankly, both of them are going to try and deal with him as best they can, and that’s all that they can do. They know that. But putting them up against each other over this is just really un-Australian.

Often you’ll have tough, intense conversations behind closed doors. But once the cameras are in, you’ll tend to present a united front and focus on the areas of disagreement.

There is a risk of that, and that’s why the rest of the world needs to come together. But it’s certainly dangerous times for Ukraine, but also more broadly for any country that relies on a US security guarantee.

It leaves us in a position where we need to do a lot more to look after our own defence and security needs.

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