Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie held the talks on Thursday last week with Josh Wilson from Labor,Bridget Archer from the Liberals and David Shoebridge from the Greens. They came from all sides of parliament,but they could not be sure that Labor and the Liberals would want a debate about Assange,let alone want a vote on bringing him home.
Illustration:Andrew Dyson
Six days later,they had a surprise victory. The House of Representatives voted by 86 to 42 in favour of a motion that said,directly,that the United Kingdom and the United States should bring things to a close so Assange can return home to his family in Australia. Those in favour included Anthony Albanese and the prime minister’s Labor colleagues.
The outcome was significant and the impact was real. The group of four succeeded in nudging the government towards a more assertive stance after years of shifting arguments on whether Assange was a free-speech champion or a national security villain. The result was clear in the wording because the motion did not stop at the vague idea that the matter should be brought to an end in some way. It said Assange should be allowed to come home.
Will this make a difference? “I think it matters because of the prime minister’s efforts,” says Assange’s brother,Gabriel Shipton. “It’s a public showing that he has the support of parliament. We want the UK and the US to sort this out and bring Julian home,and that message is very clear.”
The timing is important because Assange faces the High Court in London next week in a two-day hearing over the US attempt to extradite him from the UK to face charges in an American court. And that,in turn,means he would be exposed to a maximum jail sentence of 175 years on multiple counts of breaching the US Espionage Act for the leak of classified information. A defeat in the High Court probably means his legal team would apply to the European Court of Human Rights as a final attempt to stop the extradition.
The court hearing in London set the timetable for Wilkie to talk to his three fellow agitators last week. He suggested a motion in the House and the others agreed. They also agreed to raise the idea with their party colleagues to try to ensure enough cross-party support to interrupt the usual business of parliament and,perhaps,win a vote.
Wilson,as the Labor member of the group,helped to bring the government on side. He had spoken to Albanese several times about Assange but did not need a meeting with the prime minister this week to move things along. Labor advisers made it clear very early that the government would not stand in the way of a debate.
The wording of the motion was seen by its supporters as a “vanilla” proposal that did not seek to antagonise. It did not call upon Labor to act and did not take shots at the Liberals. It was aimed instead at the UK and the US.
However,it had two elements that were highly sensitive for some. The first was that it described Assange as a Walkley Award-winning journalist – always a contentious claim for his detractors because they see him as a hacker and activist. Yet the facts are clear on this point. Wikileaks won a Walkley Award for journalism in 2011 and Assange was named as the website’s editor. He was a whistleblower,in a sense,but he was not an insider. He was a publisher.
Another element was more sensitive,especially for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and the Liberals. The motion said this:“Mr Assange remains incarcerated in HMP Belmarsh in the UK,awaiting a decision on whether he can be extradited to the USA to face charges for material published in 2010,which revealed shocking evidence of misconduct by the USA.” That reflection on the US was a huge stumbling block.
Again,the facts are important. The material published in 2010 was a video called Collateral Murder and its release will probably remain the defining moment in Assange’s life,whatever comes next. The video was taken by US forces in Iraq in July 2007 and showed soldiers shooting from helicopters into a group of people in Baghdad. At least 18 were killed.
The details remain contested because critics of Wikileaks say at least one was holding a rocket-propelled grenade,but the attack clearly resulted in civilian deaths. Two children were wounded. Two of those killed were journalists for the news agency Reuters.
While the deaths came in the midst of a long war,how else could a motion in parliament describe that attack? The video was shocking evidence of misconduct. Soldiers fired on civilians from a helicopter. Wilkie would not wipe that away to win the Coalition’s support. “It made me think they were looking for an excuse not to support it,” he told me on Thursday.
Liberal leaders,however,say the motion had an unbalanced criticism of the US and this meant they could not vote in favour. Even so,they acknowledge that Dutton has previously backed the argument that the matter should be brought to an end.
Some tried to get Barnaby Joyce to vote in favour of the motion,but the former Nationals leader was in a difficult position. He argued the case for Assange as part of a group of MPs who travelled to Washington DC last September,but voting for the motion on Wednesday would mean crossing the floor and,in all likelihood,giving up his shadow cabinet position. He left the chamber before the final vote. Other Coalition MPs were also absent.
Albanese voted in favour of the motion,as did every cabinet minister and Labor caucus member in the chamber. That means the motion not only sums up the will of the House – by a convincing majority – but also the position of the government. Greens and independent MPs voted in favour,as did Archer and one other Liberal,Russell Broadbent,who now sits on the crossbench.
Until this week,the government’s position was summed up in the brief comment from Albanese on his return from Washington DC last October. “I’ve made it clear that — that it’s time it was brought to a conclusion,” he said. That was one day after he raised the problem in a private conversation with US President Joe Biden.
Those around Albanese see this as a long series of steps. They cannot predict the court decision next week,but they can steadily make the case for Assange in the hope of a resolution. Foreign Minister Penny Wong has raised this with her counterparts,and so has Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. The vote on Wednesday is simply another step.
Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in June 2012 because,he said,he feared extradition to the US. He remained there until April 2019,when police carried him out. He has been in prison ever since. There will always be doubts about some of his leaks. On balance,however,many of the leaks were in the public interest. And he has lost 12 years of freedom.
Back to the High Court next week:WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange outside the same court in central London in 2010.Reuters
Wilkie will travel to London next week to see the High Court hearings. He sees the vote in parliament as a message that has to influence decisions in the UK and the US,even if there is a long way to go. “It’s a solid building block,” he says. “It cannot be ignored.”
David Crowe is chief political correspondent.