Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that the treatment of Julian Assange is not acceptable and should not be acceptable in a civilised society like Australia's. There are two issues: Australian citizenship and whether he committed crimes. Julian is an Australian citizen. No matter what he may or may not have done, Julian has the same rights as any other Australian citizen. It's terrifying that the rule of law protecting Australians from capricious government action can be trashed in this manner. Julian has already lost 13 years to confinement, and now the United States is threatening him with life in prison for telling the truth in exposing the murder of innocent civilians during Operation Enduring Freedom.

Enduring freedom—now, that's ironic. Perhaps the United States needs a dictionary. 'Freedom' means the right to free speech, especially for investigative journalists who have investigated the US government's illegal actions. Part of every journalist's duty is exposing illegal behaviour. The US constitution guarantees freedom of speech. American governments have trashed their nation's constitution. While freedom of speech is not enshrined in our Constitution, I'm advised it is enshrined in High Court rulings. Despite that, it means little, as many, including myself, discovered in COVID. Clearly the US government is making an example of Julian Assange to dissuade other journalists from publishing the truth about other illegal US government activity.

Let's connect the point about freedom of speech and COVID. We're now seeing remarkable facts emerging about big pharma, big government and big tech. Imagine if Julian had been free during COVID and WikiLeaks was functioning properly. All the documents it has taken years to start prising out of the hands of big government and the big pharma state showing the most egregious and inhuman breaches of truth and decency may have been brought to light much earlier. Instead, we had compliant mouthpiece media that repeated the talking points of the pharmaceutical state.

Government has three roles: to protect life, to protect property and to protect freedom. Successive Australian and American governments are taking lives, killing people in unauthorised state sanctioned killings, stealing property, transferring wealth from 'we the people' to big pharma, removing freedom and imprisoning journalists, thereby destroying the nation's freedom and every person's freedom.

For serving the country, Julian has suffered 13 years of deprivation of liberty. Opponents say he jeopardised American soldiers and spies. Now, a court can decide that. Do you remember the weapons of mass destruction claims? The perpetrators admitted they had no evidence. Who held them accountable? Not one member of parliament. Not one member of congress. They got away with it. To anyone who thinks Julian Assange deserves the treatment he's getting, I say: remember the wisdom of the words of St Francis of Assisi, who said, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' Our government needs to use our close relationship with America to bring Julian Assange home now.