Treasurer Joe Hockey has confirmed Vladimir Putin will attend the G20 summit in Brisbane and has warned the Russian President to expect "a full and frank dialogue" with world leaders.
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Mr Hockey told the ABC's Insiders on Sunday that the G20 member nations were in consensus that Mr Putin should attend the summit in November.
There had been pressure on the Abbott government to ban the Russian President from coming to Australia for the economic forum following the MH17 disaster, which killed 298 people, including 38 Australian citizens and residents.
But Mr Hockey signalled at last month's G20 finance summit in Cairns that the door should be left open for Mr Putin because maintaining an open dialogue with Russia "will be the best way to alleviate some of the geopolitical challenges" countries were facing because of the conflict in Ukraine.
Mr Hockey said he had spoken on Saturday with Russia's finance minister Anton Siluanov, who had confirmed Mr Putin would attend.
"I certainly shared with him my views and the views of Australia about Russia's activity in Ukraine and he did confirm that President Putin will be coming to the G20 leaders summit in Brisbane," Mr Hockey said.
"I think there will be some full and frank dialogue with President Putin at that meeting."
When asked if he supported Mr Putin's attendance, Mr Hockey did not directly answer but said it was the "strong view" of leaders, including US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that Mr Putin should not be banned.
"We don't have any unilateral decision making power in relation to that, and he will be attending," Mr Hockey said.
Meanwhile the Treasurer has not ruled out additional cuts to welfare if the government has to find more spending cuts as it looks to reduce the budget deficit.
Labor and crossbench senators are currently blocking more than $20 billion in budget savings measures, including the GP co-payment and changes to the indexation of pensions.
"Well, we have to look everywhere," Mr Hockey said.
"We have to get rid of waste everywhere, we have to make reductions across the board.
Mr Hockey did not back away from comments he made last week calling on Labor to pass the last of the budget reforms to free up funds to pay for Australia's involvement in Iraq.
The Treasurer was criticised on Thursday for saying if the Opposition was "honest" about its support for Iraq mission and associated costs. it would pass stalled budget measures.
"I welcome Mr Shorten's support on Iraq as does the Prime Minister and I think the Australian people would welcome that as well," Mr Hockey told Insiders.
"We have to pay for this.
"We offered savings in the budget that help us to strengthen the budget position -that means that we shouldn't have to increase taxes to pay for the security activity in Iraq and elsewhere."
