David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government should use our close relationship with the United States of America and the United Kingdom to free Julian Assange and bring him home. As we begin this debate in the chamber, I want to acknowledge the presence of Gabriel Shipton, Julian's brother, in the chamber. Thank you for coming, Gabriel, and for all your courageous work.

In 2010, Chelsea Manning, an intelligence analyst in the US military, bravely broke US law to blow the whistle to WikiLeaks about US war crimes. Chelsea was bound by US military and criminal law. She lived in the United States and was a United States citizen. In 2013, Chelsea was convicted of 17 serious criminal charges and sentenced to 35 years maximum security imprisonment. Four years later, Manning's government acknowledged the wrong in imprisoning her and her sentence was commuted by US President Obama and she was released from prison in 2017.

In 2010, Julian Assange, an Australian journalist living outside the United States, with no legal or contractual obligations to the US, published Manning's material on WikiLeaks. This included thousands of documents that exposed the brutal reality of US led wars. One of those was the deeply distressing video of cold-blooded murder by a US Apache helicopter of Iraqi citizens that included two Reuters journalists. Since then, the US has been openly targeting Julian Assange in order to prosecute him under the US Espionage Act. As part of this, in late 2010, the US National Security Agency added Assange to its 'manhunting time line', an annual account of efforts to capture or kill alleged terrorists. For the decade that followed, the US named Assange as effectively an enemy of the state and, in 2019, he was charged with multiple breaches of the US Espionage Act, with a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison. For the past four years, Assange has been held in solitary detention in a UK maximum security prison, awaiting extradition to the US.

It's now 2023, and Julian Assange is still in jail, still hounded by the US. Where is this government? What is it doing? Julian Assange is not a soldier. He is a journalist with no connection to the US and no valid legal or contractual obligations of secrecy to the US government, and he is still in jail and still being persecuted by the US, abandoned by Australia and facing a lifetime in a US prison. What was Julian's crime? Telling the truth and telling this history. He told the truth and the reality about the US-Australia relationship. The real reason Julian Assange is still in jail is that, whether it's Prime Minister Albanese or Prime Minister Morrison, Australian leaders are willing to trade a citizen's liberty, their right to speak truth to power, for a close and unquestioning bear hug from a US president. They say truth is the first victim of war and, in the case of Julian Assange, that's a truth the whole world is seeing. I'm standing in this chamber today with my colleagues echoing the concerns of millions of Australians who can see what is happening to Julian Assange is an outrageous attack on journalism and on the truth.

The Albanese government, it's true, have raised the imprisonment and extradition of Julian Assange when speaking privately with their US counterparts. They have had quiet chats, maybe a carefully worded communique, but they've never even put a single element of the Australia-US relationship on the line for Julian's freedom. Days ago, in Brisbane, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken launched an extraordinary attack on Julian Assange. He backed in allegations that Julian had not only engaged in serious criminal conduct but had risked harm to US national security. All the while, Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Wong, stood by mutely, not defending Julian and accepting Blinken's lies. It was almost as though she believed them. The US relationship, we're told, is critically important to both countries, and many hoped this would work in Julian's favour. But the reverse, it seems, is true. We had the US saying to our Prime Minister: 'Buy our nuclear submarines, fighter planes and missiles. Host our bases. Embed our spies. Don't forget to smile like it's good for you. And, by the way, we will jail your people whenever we choose.' And what is Prime Minister Albanese saying? 'Sure. What a deal.'

When I talk with the many good, committed people who are working to bring Julian home, they tell me how they hope that Labor will do what is needed to make this happen, because failing to do so sends a clear message to our biggest allies that Australia is a walkover. So we say to Prime Minister Albanese today: If not now, then when? When will you tell the US that the next purchase of US military equipment is on the line or AUKUS is at play if they don't respect our citizens' right to truth and if they don't end the prosecution so that we can free Julian Assange and bring him home?