George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As you know, I'm a conservative, and as a conservative I support free speech and press freedom. That's why I went with the member for Clark over to the UK last week to visit Australian journalist and publisher Julian Assange, who's detained in HM Prison Belmarsh in England. He's self-described his state of health as 'not good'. It was clear that he was disoriented, which was obviously the result of prolonged isolation because he has been in jail and, before that, in an Ecuadorian embassy. Why? Because the US is seeking to extradite him on apparent allegations that he was involved in espionage and conspiracy to hack.

These allegations amount to WikiLeaks calling for information from whistleblowers and then receiving and publishing such information. Well, that's not espionage and that's not conspiracy to hack; that's journalism. Is he a journalist? I'd say yes, and probably more purer than most, but does it matter? Of course not. He's a publisher at the very least, and it shouldn't be a crime to publish material that's in the public interest. In my books, he's actually a hero for exposing war crimes. Whether you think he's a hero or whether you think he's a ratbag, again, it doesn't matter. If he's a ratbag, he's our ratbag, and he should be brought home. No Australian should be facing a situation where a foreign court is deciding whether they should be sent to another foreign country to face trial for simply publishing the truth. My message to both the US and the UK is: bring Julian Assange home now.