Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In June it will be 11 years since Julian Assange lost his freedom. He is an Australian citizen. He was first confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years from mid-2012, and since April 2019 he has been held in the high-security Belmarsh prison, from where he fights extradition proceedings to the US. If he is taken to the US, he faces 18 charges in what many believe will be a biased legal process that could see him spend the rest of his life in prison. His alleged crime is accessing and publishing secret US military information. The more widely held view is that he is being pursued by the US as retribution for exposing US war crimes, corruption and human rights abuses.

The Assange case has drawn the attention of countless human rights advocates, legal experts, academics, political leaders, journalists and other people throughout the world, including here in Australia, where, according to polling, the clear majority believe he should be released. There is widespread agreement that the charges against Julian Assange should be dropped. Regardless of any wrongdoing on his part, he has already been severely punished. Furthermore, there are international concerns about US law extending beyond its jurisdiction. Julian Assange is not a US citizen, and he was not in the US when the material was published.

Importantly, Chelsea Manning, the US military intelligence analyst who provided the classified material to Assange, has already been sentenced and released after President Obama commuted her sentence. As an Australian citizen, Julian Assange is not protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which the War of Independence was supposedly fought over and which states in part:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …

Interestingly, others who similarly published the offending material are not and never have been pursued by the US.

The pursuit and detention of Julian Assange contradicts all of the values which are at the core of Western democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, universal human rights, transparency of government and a justice system with integrity. It is estimated that throughout the world there are one million political prisoners. Many millions more are captive and oppressed in their own homelands, subjected to brutal human rights violations. In Iran, it is claimed that over 750 people have been killed and 30,000 have been detained, whilst others have been mercilessly assaulted and some even sentenced to death for standing up for basic human rights which we in Australia take for granted. The Iranian people and those in other places who are similarly being persecuted are crying out to the West for help, yet our calls for justice on their behalf will have no credibility and will be ridiculed while the persecution of Julian Assange continues.

Last week the UK, the USA and Australia announced the nuclear submarine deal. It is an agreement where the overriding objective is to provide security for the free world and all the freedoms and human rights we hold dear. Julian Assange's fate rests with the three AUKUS partners. Australia, as a founding nation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UK—which has a justice system built on the 13th century Magna Carta, which outlaws arbitrary detention and has been described as 'the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot'—and the US, which prides itself on its Bill of Rights, should not allow the ongoing persecution of Julian Assange to diminish their credibility as leading nations of the free world. It seems inconceivable, given that Australia, the UK and the USA have entered into a decades-long, complex AUKUS agreement that binds the three countries so tightly in so many ways for decades to come, that Julian Assange's release cannot also be negotiated. It is time for Julian Assange to be freed. His health is deteriorating, and he has suffered enough.

House adjourned at 20:00