Penny Wong said she wouldn’t engage in the “hypothetical” of whether or not Australia would follow through with its obligations under the International Criminal Court and carry out its arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked by the Coalition in senate estimates.

Michaelia Cash wanted to know if Netanyahu, who is wanted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, was “welcome in Australia”.

Wong said she wouldn’t engage in hypotheticals. But Cash said “under a Dutton government he would be very much welcomed here”.

Which puts a Dutton government on the same side as the authoritarian Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary.

As AAP reports Hungary has announced it is withdrawing from the ICC and welcomed Netanyahu with open arms:

In an announcement timed with Netanyahu’s visit on Thursday, Orban said Hungary would withdraw completely from the ICC, an organisation set up more than two decades ago to prosecute those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

“This is no longer an impartial court, a rule-of-law court, but rather a political court. This has become the clearest in light of its decisions on Israel,” Orban said at a news conference with Netanyahu where they did not take questions.

Orban had invited his Israeli counterpart to Budapest in November, a day after the arrest warrant was issued over Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip that was launched following an attack by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas on southern Israel.

Well The Economist is not mincing words.

Updated analysis by the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute reveals that a fair and appropriate increase to the minimum wage, and accompanying increases to award rates, would not have a significant effect on inflation.

The analysis examines the correlation between minimum wage increases and inflation going back to 1990, and finds no consistent link between minimum wage increases and inflation.

It also reveals that such an increase to award wages could be met with only a small reduction in profit margins. 

The report, authored by Greg Jericho, based on previous work by both he and Jim Stanford, finds that an increase to the National Minimum Wage and award wages of between 5.8% and 9.2% in the Fair Work Commissions’ Annual Wage Review, due in June, is required to restore the real buying power of low-paid workers to pre-pandemic trends. 

The report also finds that this would not significantly affect headline inflation. 

Key findings of the report include:

• Last year’s decision, which lifted the minimum wage and award wages by 3.75 per cent, offset the inflation of the previous year but still left those on Modern Awards with real earnings below what they were in 2020.
• By June this year, the real value of Modern Award wages will be almost 4 per cent below what they were in September 2020.
• Despite increases in the minimum wage over the past 2 years above inflation, inflation fell by a combined 4.5 percentage points.
• There has been no significant correlation between rises in the minimum wage and inflation since 1990.
• Raising wages by 5.8 to 9.2 per cent this year would offset recent inflation and restore real wages for award-covered workers to the pre-pandemic trend.
• Even if fully passed on by employers, higher award wages would have no significant impact on economy-wide prices.
• A 9.2 per cent increase in award wages could be fully offset, with no impact on prices at all, by a 1.8 per cent reduction in corporate profits – still leaving profits far above historical levels 

“Australia’s lowest paid workers have been hardest hit by inflation over the past 3 years,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute’s Center for Future Work.

“The price rises of necessities always hurt those on low incomes harder than those on average and high incomes.

“This analysis shows there is no credible economic reason to deny them a decent pay raise above inflation.

“It’s vital the Fair Work Commission ensure that the minimum wage not only keeps up with inflation but also returns the value to the real trend of before the pandemic.”

Labor has teased it will be releasing detail on plans for a critical minerals strategic reserve, which is politician talk for ‘we have worked out from giving away our other natural resources like gas that we probably should have kept a lot more for ourselves, so now we have found this other stuff, we’re not going to be complete idiots and let mining companies have it all at the detriment of the Australian people’.

Don Farrell is talking about that a little more today because the Trump tariffs are still dominating the news cycle (Israel is killing between 70 and 100 Palestinians a day on rough estimates and bombed a school sheltering families as we all slept last night, but trade impacts rich countries so….)

Australia has critical minerals needed in the energy transition and new technologies (batteries are very big right now) and so everyone is looking for their critical minerals source. The US does not have an abundance of critical minerals and rare earths, so it is trying to hoover up as much as it can (you may remember Trump tried to get Ukraine’s in return for support against Russia) so critical minerals are hot right now.

Farrell:

Australia is often described as the lucky country and when it comes to critical minerals and rare earths Australia is again a lucky country.

We either have the most or the second-most reserves of critical minerals in the world and, of course, we think we can provide those minerals to all of those countries that are part of the net zero project.

We have reached agreement with the Europeans, so we – we couldn’t get an agreement with the Europeans on a Free Trade Agreement, but we did get an agreement with the Europeans on critical minerals.

You’ll have seen President Trump talk about Greenland, talk about the Ukraine in the context of access to critical minerals. Well, we got them right here. We got the technology to extract them. We’re one of the most efficient countries in the world for the extraction of minerals and we can do the same for those critical minerals, and, of course, we can process them here.

This Government as part of our made in Australia policies, we believe we can process those minerals. So we think we can be a reliable supplier of those minerals into the future. As the Prime Minister said yesterday, he’ll be making some more comments and some more statements about what we propose to do in this critical minerals space.

Al Jazeera has reported on the US Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 which ranked critical mineral countries this way:

• China – 44 million metric tonnes (mt; 1mt is equal to 1,000 kilogrammes). It also controls about 70 percent of global rare earth mineral processing
• Brazil – 21 million mt
• India – 6.9 million mt
• Australia – 5.7 million mt
• Russia – 3.8 million mt
• Vietnam – 3.5 million mt
• United States – 1.9 million mt
• Greenland – 1.5 million mt
• Tanzania – 890,000mt
• South Africa – 860,000mt
• Canada – 830,000mt
• Thailand – 4,500mt

The ABC Investigations team have uncovered “a textbook case of astroturfing” (when fake campaigns attempt to look like grassroot support for an issue) with the company which is doing the internal polling for the Coalition also attempting to boost public support for the gas industry.

As Pat McGrath and Kirsten Robb report:

Corporate records show the group was set up by the CEO of Tamboran Resources — a gas company developing fracking operations in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin, which is listed on the Australian share market and New York Stock Exchange.

Freshwater Strategy has also been hired by the Coalition to conduct internal polling and voter research during the federal election campaign.

Emails obtained by ABC Investigations show Freshwater Strategy director Jonathon Flegg offering to give a personal briefing about Australians for Natural Gas to figures in the business community.

“All of the published opinion polls are pointing to the likelihood of a hostile minority government after the forthcoming federal election,” he wrote in an email sent earlier this year.

“The future of our domestic energy security hinges in the balance, impacting all Australians.”

You can read more on that, here.

Bandt says in a minority government, the Greens would make putting dental into Medicare a priority in any negotiations.

Many of the experts are saying it’s (a hung parliament) likely and when you got, you know, you just have to look at the first week of the campaign, it’s the battle of the bandaids.

We’re facing these big crises in this country. People can’t afford to buy a home, people are skipping healthcare because they can’t afford it, we got floods, we got fires, and instead we just got this tinkering around the edges.

People have got a choice between the timid and the terrible really. I think people deserve better than that. Now, you have got less than 1-in-3 people across the country voting less than a third of the country votes for the government.

A bit more of the country voting for the opposition and about a third voting for someone else, and so, I think there is a really strong desire to have more voices there in Parliament, and we’re saying in that situation, we’re being really clear -we want to kick Peter Dutton out and get Labor to act on issues like getting dental into Medicare.

Now to the giant toothbrush.

Putting dental into Medicare has long been the Greens policy, but Bandt said it’s beyond time for the major parties to back it in.

People are putting off going to the dentist because they can’t afford it. If your child needs braces, it can run into the thousands of dollars.

When we had minority Parliament last time, the Greens got Dental into Medicare for children, and so if you haven’t used it yet, it’s worth it, you can take your child to the dentist and use your Medicare card for treatment for under 18s.

Now, we want to get it in for everyone. Australians are already spending huge amount of money going to the dentist.

By bringing that into Medicare, it will deliver real savings. How do we afford it? Well, at the moment, 1-in-3 big corporations in this country pays no tax at all and so we have released a costed plan to make these big corporations start paying their fair share of tax. But more than covers the cost of getting dental into Medicare.

To Adam Bandt’s point about what Canada is doing, prime minister Mark Carney (who is also in an election campaign) wants. countries to band together and create a new free trade system, which would exclude the United States.

This was what former Clinton economic advisor Robert Reich suggested yesterday.

Carney has said: yup, let’s go.

Adam Bandt continues:

Peter Dutton wants to bring Trump-style politics to Australia. Anthony Albanese wants to bring Trump to Australia. He invited him in the middle of all of this, he’s invited him to come to Australia and visit.

… I don’t think that’s how you should relate to bullies like Trump and demagogues like Trump. I think clearly – take a look at the Ukraine, for example, they hope that Donald Trump would always be there for them and clearly he left them in the lurch, and so this should be an opportunity, I think, to reset the relationship with the United States, but instead they’re talking tough, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton, but behind the scenes, it is more of the same. Other countries, like Canada, are saying, no, we want to reassess our relationship with Donald Trump and Australia should do the same.

Greens leader Adam Bandt is a guest on ABC News Breakfast and he has brought a giant toothbrush on set.

But before we talk about the giant toothbrush, Bandt speaks on the Trump tariffs:

I think should be clear we should be detaching ourselves from Donald Trump. Donald Trump is dangerous, danger to peace, danger to democracy.

Very clearly these aren’t the acts of a friend, but still Australia acts as if Donald Trump is going to ride to the rescue, but when it comes to defence, for example, I think this is an opportunity for Australia to detach itself from Donald Trump, have a much more independent relationship.

We have got the capacity to now forge those new alliances with other countries that Donald Trump is doing this to, but we should certainly not be tying ourselves at the hip to Donald Trump now and basing our whole defence policy on Donald Trump riding into the rescue.