First time poster, please be gentle.
Seems to have dropped a further $100, to a very low $1,097. Does not appear to be active stock in store, but available for free Metro delivery, or Click and Collect from Monday 15th July (at least in Melbourne).
I noticed that Walmart in the US have the Macbook Air M1 2020 on an exclusive retailing arrangement for USD$650 - I wonder if this is the case in Australia for Officeworks?
Apparently in the US they are still being manufactured by Apple for this promotion - this is not stock left-over nor refurbished.
Unless you have a USB-C monitor, you will need a dongle. If you want 4K and HDR, the safest bet might be the Apple official dongle. If you don't care about HDR, you could opt for a cheaper 4K/60Hz dongle.
Remote desktop to Mac Mini, good question, I generally do the other way around… but there is a youTube video explaining how to do it:
Remote Access your Mac from Windows 10 with VNC client