A government backbencher has called for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be brought back to Australia, after a British court formally approved his extradition to the United States.
Liberal MP Jason Falinski, a moderate facing an independent challenge in his Sydney Northern Beaches seat of Mackellar, told Crikey that while he respected the British court’s ruling, he hoped the Morrison government could negotiate for Assange to be returned to Australia.
“My hope would be instead of getting extradited he’d be sent back to Australia — the sooner the better,” Falinski said.
“For him and for his family, this is an awful situation to be in.”
Following a brief hearing yesterday, the Westminster Magistrates Court made an order approving Assange’s extradition, after his legal team was denied permission to appeal it by the UK Supreme Court last month. If extradited, Assange faces 17 espionage charges and one related to computer misuse. His legal team say he could face up to 175 years in prison.
Assange’s fate now lies in the hands of British Home Secretary Priti Patel. His legal team’s final remaining avenues are to make submissions to Patel, or appeal to the British High Court.
But independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who chairs the Parliamentary Friends of the Bring Julian Assange Home Group, said that while the decision was disappointing, one positive dimension was how the issue had become “intensely political” now that court processes were finished.
“No longer can British and Australian politicians hide behind the excuse that it’s a matter for the courts,” he told Crikey.
“It’s entirely appropriate now for Scott Morrison to pick up the phone to Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, and, for that matter, Anthony Albanese, to say what he would do if he became PM in four weeks’ time.”
With a few notable exceptions, support from the government has been tepid. Facing questions on RN Breakfast this morning, Finance Minister Simon Birmingham said the Australian government wouldn’t challenge the ruling.
“There remain appeal rights for Mr Assange, depending on decisions that have [been] made and we’ll continue to provide, where it is taken up, appropriate consular assistance,” he said.
But Falinski is one of a growing number of government MPs who’ve publicly opposed Assange’s extradition. Last year Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce used an opinion piece in the Nine newspapers to call for Assange’s return to Australia.
“They [Britain] should try him there for any crime he is alleged to have committed on British soil or send him back to Australia, where he is a citizen,” Joyce said.
Tasmanian backbencher Bridget Archer, who holds the Coalition’s most marginal seat of Bass, also supports diplomatic action to bring Assange to Australia.
Assange’s parliamentary support also unites both ends of the political spectrum. His Parliamentary Friends group includes nine Greens, but is also co-chaired by hard-right former Coalition MP turned One Nation Senate candidate George Christensen.
Last month, Assange, who has been incarcerated at Belmarsh Prison since 2019, married his long-term partner Stella Morris. Wilkie said Assange’s long, very public ordeal has drawn more parliamentarians to the whistleblower’s cause.
“I’ve detected in the last year or two, a lot of people who were happy for him to rot in jail have changed their mind,” he said.
This Assange matter is one of numerous unforgivable political persecutions in which The Australian government is engaged, either by criminal neglect (in the case of Assange) or by spite, in the case of Colleary, McBride & Boyle.
The mealy mouthed nonsense politicians on 3 continent has spewed forth about Assange’s alleged great sin of damaging the US’s ‘national security’ has been sickening. I may be a simple soul, but as far as I understand it, espionage entails the transfer of ‘secret’ information stolen from one nation and giving it to another for the benefit of the recipient and the detriment of the ‘victim’ nation. Assange may have stolen ‘classified’ information, and that may have been illegal, but it cannot amount to espionage. Windbag claims have made about the lives of spooks and military personnel who Assange is said to have put in danger. If any of that was true, we would have heard all about it by now. In reality, all Assange has done (perhaps illegally) is expose the incompetence and mendacity of various western security organisations. Therefore, for causing a lot of powerful, incompetent and vindictive people mortifying embarrassment, and the original theft, he has been mercilessly persecuted for over a decade. And the gutless Australian government has done precisely SFA about that great injustice.
Why would this government do anything to relieve Assange’s unjust torment when it is actively persecuting Bernard Collaery simply for allegedly disclosing criminal conduct by ASIS, conduct about which the world is patently aware. Yet the criminal, but vacuous, perpetrator of the reveal crimes, is covering himself in more glory by pushing the UK’s recent facsimile of Australia’s disgusting persecution of refugees.
Or persecuting an ATO employee (Boyle) for disclosing clearly unethical tactics by a wholly publicly funded department that collects the funds that funds it. ATO conduct that the many victims of its oppressive tactics against taxpayer who fund it could tell you all about without being prosecuted. What on earth can be secret about tax collection, the whole hub of government’s ability to do public good.
Or persecuting McBride for disclosing what very much looks like ware crimes by the ADF, conduct that BRS has inexplicably chosen to publicise in intricate detail because his pride has been wounded.
So all of them are being cruelly punished for revealing ‘secrets’ that could be no more public. What an effing farce!
These matters make me ashamed to be Australian.
Totally agree with all of your comments BA. Well said!!!
And ‘national security’ is the go-to justification used by every tin-pot dictator to justify their repression – ‘kill the chicken to scare the monkey’.
Small point- neither Assange nor Wikileaks stole anything.
Many grander entities than Wikileaks fell over themselves to publish what Wikileaks published.
I may have missed reports of the editors & proprietors of WaPo, NYTimesGrauniad and NewsCorpse being banged up for the last decade or more.
Or that it was the guardian journos who published the code to unlock the unredacted info which supposedly put said spooks in danger.
In a quickie book, “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy” is a 2011 book by British journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.
Full of factual errors & howlers so obviously poorly proofed or not at all in their venal, mad rush to be ahead of the pack.
Magnificent! Thank you.
This saga has been a disgrace from the get-go. Julia Gillard was the first PM to be condemnatory about Assange, this set the pattern. Every Prime Minister since then has been a gutless wonder, complicit in allowing an Australian citizen to be mentally abused by a legal system which could’ve easily been bypassed.
Albanese should use the return & protection of Assange as an obvious wedge during this election.
This whole embarrassing and disgraceful sell-out episode of the Oz government and their media tuggers acting toward Assange has been like watching an episode of Thunderbirds, with Uncle Sam pulling their strings.
Gillard should be ashamed of her role in Assange’s abuse and torture. Easily her greatest single failure.
From the LNP you would not expect any better than their pathetic failure to act.
Albanese needs to be making those phone calls right now.
Loved her, but she made a few missteps like this.
Good idea but it may well be out of bounds considering the nature of our majority Neocon media .
It might backfire, although it may draw the Neocons out of their self orchestrated and very deliberate lack of logic, their genius to create nonsense, I think they’ll burn everyone who dares to differ on a stake . Ultimately I think talking about Assange will add to the confusion, perhaps the neocon media empire is a little more vulnerable during election campaigns and it may cut through, I haven’t noticed that particularly in the past, the Neocons seem to do nicely..
In the 3 years that Assange has spent in the “British Guantanemo” prison, what has this pathetic excuse for a Federal Government done to support him and seek his release?
No more but no less than did PM Gillard who said that he was a traitor – to which country, the one to which Australia is a mere satrapy?
On Dec 7th, 2010 Ms Gillard said: “Let’s not try and put any glosses on this. It would not happen, information would not be on WikiLeaks if there had not been an illegal act undertaken.”
“The Australian Federal Police is going to provide the Government with some advice about potential criminal conduct of the individual involved,” she added….”What I would say about the publication of the WikiLeaks information is it’s grossly irresponsible. We’ve got the Australian Federal Police looking to see whether Australian laws have been broken, and then we’ve got the commonsense test about the gross irresponsibility of this conduct.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-12-07/gillard-prejudicing-assanges-right-to-trial/2365538
That is an important point that goes to the political pressure from overseas on our governments regardless of how they are painted by the quite openly Neoconservative media majority we have been sporting here for the last 40 years. Since the concept of telling both sides of the story was considered politically reckless by the powers that be.
Our governments have been successively Neo conservative since Hawke, while Labor governments sometimes shake the fences there is an overbearing presence that has oversight and ultimately control of our polity.
Could we not dump the subs deal and look into buying Chinese subs? AUKUS plus a free Assange, or zilch. Or… how’s about this – we send the Aussie SAS to bust him out of prison, have the PM in his RAAF plane waiting at one of those disused WW2 airdromes. Once he’s home, a bit of plastic surgery, lose the scarf, new ID then hide him in plain sight as an independent for Bennelong. It just might work; at least it’s a plan. Of course, the glaring weak point is that he would rather stay in prison for 175 years than go into politics.
Let’s face it: bullies rule the school yard and the world because we let them.
We even vote for ’em.
And when they are on the nose we send them overseas on ridiculous salaries to promote Australia
Climate Change and ICAC are the only issues to debate over the next 4 weeks.
Where is the ha-ha emoticon when you need it?!
Love the way your mind works, drastic. Beautiful stuff!
Australian born and bred carries expectations? That citizenship binds both government and, citizen. A bonding of State and citizen for common good of both entities.
Current Pandemic introduced doubt. The on-going persecution of Assange is a living denial of that doubt. The Morrison Government to-date has abandoned, undeniably, Julian Assange. An Australian citizen. No more or less than international flotsam and jetsam at play of International persecutors? Assange, an Australian citizen adrift. Why? Because his own Govt abandoned and continues to deny him rather than initiate a simple procedure whereby he be returned to Australia on request. Assange, is an Australian citizen.
The Morrison Govt’s denial of one citizen, is a denial of all citizens. There is no bond, belief. Keep this in mind, when next you travel or, consider for whom to vote!
The ‘I am Spartacus’ declaration aptly adapts to I am Julian Assange.
Care to explain Zut? My Greek history may be lacking, but I would prefer a more direct comment, rather than start research that might turn out to be tedious.
It’s Roman history, not Greek.
There were three major slave revolts, known as the Servile Wars, from 135-71BC, the last led by Spartacus.
Watch the movie if reading history is too tedious or, if you can remember wayyy back to January 2015, try to recall Je suis Charlie (Hebdo).