The Defence Department’s failure to provide airlines with information about the coordinates of Chinese warships circling Australia so that they could avoid further live-fire drills has been criticised for risking passenger safety, as Anthony Albanese stumbled over more details about the flotilla.

Albanese claimed that The Australian Financial Review’s revelations that airlines, including Qantas and Virgin, had been frustrated last Saturday by Defence’s rejection of their requests for location data on the flotilla had been canvassed by Senate estimates when they had not.