Monday, 11 August 2025, was a dark day in Australian political history. On that day, a serving Australian prime minister publicly thanked a wanted war criminal.

As he stood beside Penny Wong at Parliament House that afternoon, having just announced his government’s intention to conditionally recognise a Palestinian state at the UN in September, Anthony Albanese thanked a man who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He thanked a man who is committing what has now been labelled a genocide by (among others) the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a United Nations special committee, the Spanish, Irish, and South African Governments, and respected international and Israeli human rights organisations.

I’m referring, of course, to Benjamin Netanyahu.

For those who missed the press conference that day, here is the context. In the course of his response to a question by a press gallery journalist about the “tone” of his phone call with Netanyahu and whether the latter had “warned” him against recognising a Palestinian state, Albanese said: “The discussion that I had with Prime Minister Netanyahu was one which was a civil discussion, and I thank him for the conversation that we had.”

Albanese was not referring back to his private thanking of Netanyahu, which no doubt also took place as their apparently unusually long discussion came to an end (shameful enough in and of itself). No, this was a public reiteration of thanks – a message sent out deliberately to both the Australian public and a global audience.

Not a single journalist in the Canberra press pack that day thought to ask whether it was appropriate for the prime minister of a signatory country to the ICC to publicly thank a man overseeing a genocide. Albanese’s thanking of Netanyahu wasn’t carried by the TV news bulletins that evening, and no journalists (to my knowledge) penned pieces referencing it the following day. Instead, the Australian and international media were swept up by the historicalness of the Palestine recognition announcement and the subsequent Israeli reaction.

And so the Labor Government — after close to two years of trying to convince us all that Australia is a small player with little influence in the Middle East — finally had what it needed: a policy to demonstrate to the Australian public it was trying to help the Palestinians. But as many rightly pointed out at the time, recognition of Palestinian statehood would do nothing to stop Netanyahu’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. And it hasn’t. Not a single journalist at Albanese’s press conference thought to ask him how recognition of a Palestinian state would do anything to stop the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the deliberate starvation. Such is the state of Australian journalism.

The public thanking of Netanyahu by Albanese sent a powerful but subtle message to the Australian public: He’s not a war criminal. He’s not an international pariah. He’s an international leader. He’s my equal. He deserves respect. The language of respect was deployed more directly days later when Netanyahu smashed Albanese’s meek attempt to make evil seem banal. In response to Netanyahu’s public lashing of him as a “weak politician”, Albanese responded by saying that he treats “leaders of other countries with respect”.

It left me wondering: how many high crimes does an international leader need to commit before Albanese deems that they are no longer worthy of public respect? Once again, not a single Australian journalist thought to ask the obvious question in response: is respectful dealing the message an Australian prime minister should be sending to a man wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity? Such is the state of Australian journalism.

Contrast all this with the reaction of the Australian media to former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews’ visit to China last week. After months spent goading the federal Labor Government about the absence of a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Albanese, the Australian media went into a frenzy over footage of Andrews, now a private citizen, shaking hands with the leader of Australia’s largest trading partner, China, and photographs of him standing with a group of world leaders that included Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.

I will here remind readers that Trump has openly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and is providing material and political support to Netanyahu as he commits a genocide. I will further remind readers that on 15 August, having laid out the red carpet for him on the tarmac of a US airbase in Alaska, Trump clapped and warmly greeted dictator Putin (himself a wanted war criminal) before a B-2 stealth bomber performed a low flyover above the two men, interpreted by many as a nod of respect by Trump to Putin.

It was the first time Putin had been invited to a Western country since his illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the first time ever that a Russian presidential visit had taken place on a US military base. Even Trump used the language of respect, stating that it was: “very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country as opposed to us going to his country or even a third-party place”.

I point all this out not as a defence of Andrews. On the contrary. My interest is in the selective outrage and double standards being applied by our political and media class, and the cognitive dissonance we all inhabit as a result. Where was the outrage when a serving Coalition minister attended the same parade in China in 2015? Where was the outrage at Trump’s courting of the wanted Russian war criminal on US soil? Where is the self awareness when Australian journalists goad Albanese about the lack of a face-to-face meeting with Trump, given what we know about the latter’s policy vis-a-vis Gaza?

Even the most idealistic among us can appreciate that, from time to time, international leaders are required to meet and greet individuals they’d prefer not to meet. To smile for the cameras. To compliment people they privately despise. To make hard moral trade-offs in the national interest. But there comes a time when playing the game of respectful international diplomacy becomes a sickening dereliction of duty. When a politician is involved in genocide, ethnic cleansing and the use of starvation as a weapon of war, that time has come.

The hardheads will call me naive, but morality matters in politics. Albanese made a grave error of judgment when he thanked Netanyahu publicly. It should be called out and recorded as such for posterity. The inability of our media class to apply anything that comes close to a consistent moral standard in their coverage of world events, shows how reactive they are to the cues set by the politicians whose access they crave and whose language and framing they parrot.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.