His legal team is expected to appeal the decision.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday he stood by comments he made about Assange in December,when he said “enough is enough” and that it was time for the publisher to be returned to Australia.
His government has been working behind the scenes to raise the case with US officials. Albanese wouldn’t comment on that,saying he would “lead a government that engages diplomatically and appropriately with our partners”.
“There are some people who think that if you put things in capital letters on Twitter and put an exclamation mark,that somehow makes it more important. It doesn’t,” he said.
Assange is accused of helping former US soldier Chelsea Manning obtain and leak classified information on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Manning hadher sentence commuted by former US president Barack Obama in 2017. Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2012 and lived there until beingarrested and taken to Belmarsh Prison in 2019.
Labor MPs who were part of the formal Bring Julian Assange Home parliamentary group in the previous term of parliament said they were pleased there seemed to have been a shift.