Passengers on a Qantas flight from Singapore to London are still stuck in Baku, Azerbaijan, after their aircraft made an emergency landing due to concerns there was smoke in the cargo hold.

The A380 reversed course near Tbilisi in Georgia before landing at Baku international airport yesterday. The airline said initial investigations have found no evidence of smoke. 

“Although it was considered likely to be a sensor fault, the aircraft diverted to Baku as a safety precaution,” the spokesperson said. “Engineers will inspect the aircraft prior to continuing its journey”.

Also in the news today, Liberals have hit back at their party’s election review over comments saying some “local members did not maximise the advantages of incumbency”. The Liberals attacked the review as a “whitewash” designed to shift blame on to defeated MPs in order to downplay the unpopularity of Scott Morrison.

“Every single one of the people who lost metro seats added to the Liberal party vote substantively, while the Liberal brand itself was a drag on the vote,” they claimed.

Late yesterday the Victorian environmental watchdog investigating REDcycle charged the operators behind the botched plastic bag recycling program for failing to provide information about the locations of warehouses that secretly stockpiled hundreds of millions of bags.

We also await the Yuletide wisdom of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, who will be giving their first Christmas messages as prime minister and opposition leader respectively late this afternoon.