Day: June 26, 2024

After bleak beginnings, our campaign united a formidable group of parliamentarians from across the political spectrum

In late 2012 I had a call from John Shipton, Julian Assange’s father. I had done some advocacy on the Assange case for the Australian Lawyers Alliance. John wanted to know if I would run Julian’s bid to be elected to the Senate in the 2013 federal election. From that time on I have worked with John, Julian’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, the lawyer Steve Kenny and others to help bring an end to the US pursuit of Assange for publishing material which clearly implicated that nation in war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our work morphed into an Australian Assange campaign.

The Australian political environment has changed enormously since I began campaigning for Assange 11 years ago. Then, the Labor government of Julia Gillard not only showed no sympathy for Assange but ordered an investigation into whether he had broken any Australian laws in publishing the material. It was an absurd proposition and one that was quickly dismissed by commonwealth law officers. There seemed to be little interest on the part of the Coalition parties, and many in the Australian media saw Assange as a dangerous impostor.

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