Dutton’s Determination to Host Netanyahu Reveals His Trumpian Agenda Is Still On

When The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly quizzed Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton during a 16 April 2025 interview, on whether a future Coalition government would “ignore the prescription from the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he should be arrested” and allow Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Australia, the politician replied, “Yes, without hesitation”.

“Yes, he would be a welcome guest in our country,” the potential next PM clarified on Wednesday last week, in respect of the prospect of allowing Netanyahu to come to Australia. “He would be accorded the respect that the Israeli prime minister should be accorded,”

The answers to the questions were no surprise to Kelly or The Australian’s national editor Dennis Shanahan, who was also conducted for the interview, as, in ultimately being employed by the Murdoch Press, the two editors’ superiors are all working the same agenda as Dutton, prior to the Australian constituency taking a national vote on 3 May.

These statements were made just prior to Easter and straight after Dutton’s backflip on his initial deluge of praise for the Trump administration’s ultraconservative assault on its domestic population and its undermining of international law systems, of which the Israeli government commenced in October 2023, when it launched the Gaza genocide.

Established at The Hague, via the Rome Statute, in 2022, the independent ICC is the highest criminal court on the planet, and it has been empowered to try the international atrocity crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The concerted undermining of the court that has long been afoot on the part of the US and Israel, is now taking hold in this country.

Other points raised during the interview included Dutton confirming that if elected to office he’ll broaden defence spending, as Trump has recommended, as well as toughening up on threats from China, Russia and Indonesian, whilst bolstering the AUKUS pact, which further reveals that rather than having turned any new page, the opposition leader continues to harbour Trumpian designs.

Dutton to join the bandwagon

Kelly didn’t stop at Netanyahu entering Australia’s jurisdiction without fear of being arrested by local authorities under the terms of a 21 November-issued ICC international arrest warrant in the Israeli PM’s name, despite Australia having ratified the Rome Statute on 1 July 2002, as the journalist asked Dutton whether he’d also seek to “review Australia’s commitment to and participation” in the ICC.

The Murdoch elder suggested this might too be a Coalition goal, because he understands the unspoken agenda to silence the ICC in the west, as since Israel began its callous mass murder and starvation program against the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza in late 2023, the ICC has turned its eye upon Israeli perpetrated atrocities, much to the chagrin of global western leadership.

The ICC has long been criticised for its inability to bring western leaders who commit atrocities to justice. But the potential to turn its gaze upon western centres of power over its more than two decades in operation has been a concern, as both Israel and the US have failed to ratify the Rome Statute, so they’re not a party to it. Yet, each nation did assist in the ICC’s establishment.

ICC rejection in the States is a bipartisan agenda. Former US president Joe Biden determined the ICC charging of Netanyahu with atrocity crimes as being “outrageous”. Netanyahu then visited the US without any attempt to arrest him whilst Biden was still in power, and the Israeli PM, who is lording it over a mass killing with an official death toll of 61,700, has since visited the US twice under Trump.

However, earlier in his reign, US president Donald Trump went a step further in signing a 6 February 2025 executive order that decries the ICC acting illegitimately and in a baseless manner, and his nation “unequivocally opposes and expects” its “allies to oppose any ICC actions against the United States, Israel, or any other ally of the United States that has not consented to ICC jurisdiction”.

Simply carrying out its mandate

Commentators have been warning that the high-tech onslaught that Tel Aviv launched upon the Palestinians of Gaza in October 2023, a genocide that continues 18 months on, and has included the mass indiscriminate bombing and sniping of civilians, and the purposeful starvation of the entire Gaza population of over 2 million people, has been eroding and threatening international law.

The assault on the ICC, of which Dutton, the potential next PM, is hankering to get in on, is also undermining the edifice of international law, although western disdain for the highest criminal court on the planet has been escalating since then ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda determined there was enough evidence to begin an inquiry into the Situation in the State of Palestine in December 2019.

Officially launched in January 2020, the ICC investigation into Palestine is the case that permitted current ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to issue the international arrest warrant against Netanyahu last November, along with ex-Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, charging them with the war crime of starvation, the crimes against humanity of murder and persecution and other inhumane acts.

Australian law firm Birchgrove Legal lodged a claim with the ICC prosecutor in March last year that set out detailed evidence revealing a number of key Australian politicians as being complicit in Israel’s active genocide, which included PM Anthony Albanese, foreign affairs minister Penny Wong and Dutton himself.

Khan accepted the dossier of evidence, which has been added to the Situation of the State of Palestine investigation, and the submitting of The Conduct of Members of the Parliament of Australia, in Relation to the Situation in Gaza, Palestine: Accessorial Liability for Genocide communiqué, meant that Albanese was the first leader of a western nation to be referred to the ICC.

The threat to the constituency is real

Australia, like many other western nations, had long projected itself as a human rights advancing nation that held in esteem international institutions, like the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice and the ICC.

However, since our leaders have been providing cover to Israel as it’s been perpetrating a settler colonial genocide to acquire land under the catchphrase “Israel has a right to defend itself”, our nation has shown itself willing to aid in facilitating the worst atrocity since the Holocaust, yet whilst this was under Albanese, federal Labor hasn’t set the toppling of international law as an end goal.

Due to the popular rejection in this country of the authoritarian revisions of the US system that the Trump administration is so far having a lot of success in achieving, Dutton has claimed he no longer favours the path America is on.

But the truth is that much of the trajectory Dutton has pursued over his political career is akin to the agenda the Trump administration is currently progressing in the States.

The Liberal leader’s recent promise to reject his already spruiked Trumpian policy proposals, such as the mass sacking of federal public service employees and establishing a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), can just as easily be resuscitated regardless of current statements, so that a Dutton government won’t mirror the Trump administration, but they’ll likely be similar beasts.

As for the rest of the Liberal Nationals taking up seats in the parliament, shadow attorney general Michaelia Cash has shown she share’s Dutton’s outlook, when she hissed at foreign minister Wong during March Senate Estimates in regard to whether federal Labor would allow Netanyahu into the country if the genocidaire does intend on dropping in post-federal election.

While Country Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Dutton’s potential head of DOGE, revealed her Trumpian tendencies, when she last week uttered the phrase “make Australia great again”, during a campaign speech, prior to a photo of the senator appearing in the press the following day, that showed her sporting a Trumpian MAGA (Make America Great Again) baseball cap.