 is that the American Josie Manning to welcome to see him live the premier episode of season five saving Assange saving us face I'm Joe Laurier the editor-in-chief of consortium news as Julian Assange awaits a decision by the High Court in London whether to accept his appeal against the home secretary's decision to extradite him to the United States the focus of the story has shifted here to Australia where the prime minister Anthony Albanese has said for the first time that he's discussed with the United States bringing Assange's ordeal to a close a prominent television journalist here John Lyons of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation shortly afterwards said he understood that Assange will be back home in Australia within two months CN Live traveled to Hobart the capital of the state of Tasmania to discuss the latest developments in the Assange case with Christine Milne a former senator in the federal parliament and head of the Australian Green Party who has been a vocal advocate for the imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher and with Greg Barnes a senior counsel and advisor to the Assange campaign welcome to this special CN Live presentation from Hobart Tasmania Australia the former leader of the Australian Green Party Christine Milne Christine thank you for joining us on CN Live we're going to speak to you mostly about Julian Assange because you've been involved in his case for some time now but first since we're largely speaking to an American audience tell us a little bit about yourself how you began in politics and your rise to the leadership of the Green Party well thank you for having me on the program I am an environmentalist lifelong environmentalist and I became involved in Tasmanian politics back in the 1980s trying to save the Franklin River in Tasmania and then I got into politics running the campaign against the chlorine bleaching pulp mill at Wesley Vale so that was in 1989 since then I've been involved in green politics became the Tasmanian leader than the Australian leader I was also in that time on the global council of the international union for the conservation of nature and so my whole political career has been really involved in environmentalism social justice and participatory democracy peace and non-violence and how long were you a member of parliament in Canberra I was in the federal parliament in the senate for a decade so I was elected in 2004 and I resigned in 2015 why did you resign in 2015 the coalition the conservatives had just been elected and it was very clear that we were going to go into a dark age of climate policy or climate denial I was 62 at the time and I thought to myself actually I don't want to waste the next five years of my life fighting climate denial so I'm better off outside politics and contributing through the environment movement both nationally and globally and you don't have any regrets since the last six years it was a kind of dark age wasn't it? The terror of the dark age was in America in Australia in fact the Murdoch media drove that dark age in the UK the US and Australia and also the Kosh brothers through their think tanks in the US it has been a terrible period for democracy for social justice but particularly for the climate but we're gradually coming out of it now but we would be foolish to think that the corporations which have captured governments in those three countries we'd be foolish to think that that state capture no longer exists it still does so there were other issues that you're dealing with in parliament in those 10 years what were they? Well in the first half of it when I had balance of power with a Labor government I managed to secure a carbon price in Australia I secured the clean energy finance corporation the renewable energy agency a parliamentary budget office we worked hard on refugee issues because we were the only party in the parliament saying that it is not a crime to seek asylum so it was a pretty dark period in politics but we did get some big wins after I left having campaigned for a long time for marriage equality after I left finally the country did get there and I was pleased about that because right back in the 90s in Tasmania it was my private members bill that secured gay law reform and took us from the worst laws in the country to the best so there have been some moves forward for groups struggling for recognition and against discrimination. Can you give me an assessment of the global green movement there have been parties in many many countries some do better than others electorally is it this large stream it's original principles of environmentalism has it gone astray in some way or how do you assess the health of the green political movement? Well I'm an ambassador for the global greens now and I'm very pleased to say that there are green parties in over 90 countries in the world and it all started here in Tasmania the world's first green party was the united Tasmania group formed here in Tasmania to try to save Lake Petta from a hydro impoundment so it's extraordinary that that idea from 1972 has now become a global movement. The greens are definitely strongest in Europe where the greens are in government in a shared power arrangement in at least six countries probably the best known is of course in Germany where they've had to struggle in recent times because of the war in Ukraine and of course the rise in dependence on gas but the extraordinary thing is they've managed to get Germany virtually off gas as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Well the German Green Party in particular with the foreign minister Annalena Baerbank has been a very vocal supporter of sending arms to Ukraine of fighting this proxy war and one might say against Russia there are other greens who disagree that like just by the former head of the U.S. yeah how do you assess the German Green Party's stance on that issue? Well I think the greens across Europe have a range of opinions but certainly the members of the European the green bloc in the European Parliament are very supportive of that action that's been taken by the German the position that's been taken by the German greens but there's a variety of opinion on that but peace and non-violence is fundamental to where the greens have come from as is environmentalism and you've got Carolyn Lucas in the House of Commons in the UK doing a fantastic job you've got Green Party in government shared government in Ireland Grace O'Sullivan is doing a fantastic job in the European Parliament she is currently in Greece standing up for the people who have been assisting the asylum seekers and rescuing them and who are now facing criminal charges for compassion extraordinary the way the world is going so we've got a green elected or two in fact in Rwanda so after the genocide finally they had the elections and we've got a green elected there so it's quite interesting we've got the Minister for Climate in New Zealand as part of the government there is a green in Finland the Foreign Minister Pekka Havista is a green so the influence of the greens is quite widespread so back to Australia now amongst the other issues that you were involved in was Julian Sange you were saying that from the very earliest time you had an interest in his case and in Wikileaks tell us a little bit about how you got interested in Wikileaks and Julian well I was lucky because in the green parliamentary team we had a senator from Western Australia called Scott Bloodlam and Scott had been a friend of Julian Assange and also his policy advisor Felicity Ruby was also a good friend of Julian Assange so unlike others who perhaps just picked up bits and pieces coming through the news they were very well informed on the issue and hence as the deputy leader and then the the leader of the greens they were able to keep me abreast of the case and so from the earliest time as soon as the whole what I regard as almost global persecution of Assange started the greens in the Australian Parliament took a strong stand in favour of press freedom and in favour of freeing Julian Assange and what were some of the earliest issues about our surrounding Assange that you were personally involved in well I can't really remember it's quite a long time ago and there's been so much that's happened since but certainly every rally that was held for Assange then the greens would be outspoken supportive of and the same in the parliament we asked questions we raised debates in the parliament and so on what was evident though was that both the coalition and the Labor Party were not having a bar of it in fact when I was in balance of power with Julia Gillard the Labor Prime Minister of Australia she came out and shockingly declared that what WikiLeaks and Assange had done were illegal now that was outrageous the federal police contradicted that but nevertheless she has never apologised nor taken a back step from that position Bob Carr the foreign minister was just as bad and I remember a disgusting press conference and he thought he was so smart he went out to say in the face of criticism from the greens myself included he went out and said look Australia has never given more consular support to any of our citizens overseas than has been given to Assange he laughed about that afterwards and said well I didn't know if it was true or not but how could you disprove it and it was absolutely disgraceful of course since he left politics and his job no longer depends on it he is now a supporter of Assange and freedom of the press but when he had the power to do something about it he was totally in line with Gillard's rejection of Assange and I don't think you can now see his position separate from where he was when he could have done something about it so right back then we were questioning why the Australian government was doing what it was doing and of course then when the coalition was elected and moving on to Scott Morrison he had a very close relationship with Pompeo that relationship was based on them both being evangelical Christians they supposedly had weekly if not more frequent than that meetings texts and so on and so there was no hope for Assange as long as we had an Australian prime minister so closely aligned to someone like Mike Pompeo did you have a clash with Gillard during question time and problem I was in the Senate and the prime minister Julia Gillard was in the lower house in the House of Representatives and so of course our debates were directed to the the ministers in the upper house so it wasn't a direct conflict but there was no movement I have to say from any of them on the front bench of either the Liberal or the Labor parties who were prepared to take a stand for Assange and the constant refrain was we're giving him every consular support you know but yet other Australian citizens whether they were in the Middle East or in Asia held in various ways there were very proactive and loud campaigns and ministers would say they had raised this issue with the foreign minister or raised it with the head of state but with Assange never. Give us a couple of the examples of when the Australian government got Australians out of captivity from various countries. So I worked very hard to get Peter Gresta out of Egypt extremely hard I worked with his family I worked with lawyers I worked with the Greens in the European Union for example and the Greens in the European Union were quite influential in that campaign in the end to get Peter Gresta freed so that is one and when he was freed and this is when the coalition was in power and Julie Bishop was the foreign minister she held a reception in the Prime Minister's suite at Parliament House for Peter Gresta for his family and for those politicians like myself who'd worked very hard to free Peter Gresta. So that is the comparison where you have how they might treat one Australian journalist locked up in Egypt but they have absolutely zero intention of putting the same effort or the same profile on someone like Julian Assange and clearly it's all about the US-Australia alliance it is all about the fact that Julian Assange has seriously exposed the war crimes of the US he not only did that but the documents that were released also provided information about the coup that was not in the true definition of the word but the leadership spill that Gillard carried out against Rudd the former prime minister in Australia those documents were there and embarrassed her severely so those in my view it has never been about freedom of the press for them it is about revenge and about the alliance with the US to try to give the US whatever the US wants because Australia is the junior partner and it's embarrassing. Was Gillard Prime Minister when Gresta was released from Egypt? No it was the coalition because the foreign minister was Julie Bishop and it was 2015 so it was I think Abbott who was still the prime minister at that stage. What had happened to Gillard she never withdrew her statement that it was illegal even though the police said it wasn't she you're saying she was personally motivated to not help Julian Assange to oppose him because of what we colleagues revealed about her so what happened to her after she left? Yeah I think it was more than just what it revealed about her I think she had a very close relationship with Hillary Clinton and I think she also had that relationship with Obama and so she was very much of a view to supporting the US position as well as what had happened to her. She knew in 2013 that she would lose the election to Tony Abbott and in the 2013 budget the Australian government made a substantial in fact the biggest of any contributing country to the Global Education Foundation set up in Washington and she lost the election and was made the global chair of that foundation on the back of that major donation that the Australian government had made and that was for a three-year term to create this organization this UN no the the Global Education Foundation already existed the Clinton Foundation was a partner to it the Australian government made a substantial donation to be paid over three years and Julia Gillard became the chair of that organization and then from there went on to have a I think an emeritus position at Oxford and then of course when the money ran out from the US she came back to Australia. What is she doing now? She's an ambassador for Beyond Blue the organization to promote a dressing mentor. She's landed on her feet sounds like politics as usual doesn't it? It's a lot of politics as usual there was a lot of planning ahead in that I'd say. Julia Gillard is not the only enemy that June Assange has in Australia why has Australia not been so strongly supportive of him even though there have been polls here I think 60 minutes here in Australia at a poll over 90 percent of Australians want him returned here and yet you don't see any real political movement is it purely because they are intimidated by the US and you're playing a much lesser even a vassal role even with the United States? Well I think Australia does play a vassal role you know with the United States there is clearly the big brother United States mentality in Canberra the notion of Australia being independent has long gone if it in fact was ever there you know I remember back to the Vietnam War with all the way with LBJ yeah but then Gough came along, Gough Whitlam and pulled troops up and re-established and then we have just slipped back into that and the US and Australia now are in very close defence arrangements and in fact it was Prime Minister Gillard who welcomed that new base in Darwin where we have now many thousand American troops and just recently of course you had the Orcus Alliance no discussion with the Australian community at all just announced that we were in this new defence alliance so in my view it is all about Australia just doing for the US what the US wants and the US wants Assange because he exposed the crimes of the US and a lot of serious involved seven a lot of other information about the US which was embarrassing and so they want to make sure that there is a chilling signal sent worldwide that you do not reveal what's going on in the US or you will suffer for life and to me that's exactly what's going on and Australia has just gone along with it there's now really no doubt that Gough Whitlam was removed in a coup by pumpkin and palace but also involvement of the US particularly the CIA you think that that still sends a message to Australian politicians today particularly someone who is the Prime Minister that if you go against the US interests you could lose your job you're overthrown I think it's less of that and more of the hero worship you know the wanting to be aligned with the global power of the US I really think it is more that so I think it's less fear and more just desperation like me too me too I want to be there when I was the leader of the Greens for example and the US went back into the Middle East the Prime Minister at the time Tony Abbott kept saying can Australia come you know we want to go we want to go and and Australia was told well you have to be invited and they're going well we need to be invited we need to be invited they just can't bear the idea that they're not going to be part of the action and so it very much is what Pompeo wanted Morrison was prepared to deliver and now we have exactly the same thing Biden had the opportunity to drop this whole case against Assange and he didn't and Australia has been building this alliance with the US and feeding more and more troops more and more dependence into it and I just don't think Australia will do anything that offends Biden they can ask they can beg as I as we are told there's quiet diplomacy going on whatever that means begging I suspect but there is no public call for Biden to respect an ally you know as an American I can only ask why why is Australia so mesmerized by the power of the United States is it because of a really a sigh up that the US government creates about its image in the world which is quite different from the reality of its behavior since the Second World War in particular which Julian Assange helped reveal which is why I think he's in the mess he's in or is it purely Australians want to be part of an empire essentially I mean once been part of the British Empire they want to feel like they're participants in it somehow and vicariously feel that power well Australia has always seen itself as a European country in Asia or and so Keating tried hard as in fact Goff had done before to say look we are in Asia we are now where the world is the the focus on Europe ought to be long gone because they are in decline Asia is on the rise we are an Asian country but instead of that there's this desperation of saying well we are an outpost if you like of Europe and the US and we are brilliantly positioned in Asia but actually our cultural connections are there and now that we've become location is strategically important as it always has been but even more so in the militarized view of the world that we've got right now I just think that people suddenly feel like they are part of a bigger picture global action and we're part of the action that brings me to Kevin Rudd because of course he a former prime minister very involved with China knows the language etc around the Asia society in New York recently and he's now been appointed the American ambassador so the ambassador to the US I should say and many people who support really massage are looking to him to have the kind of clout that even even Albanese the prime minister and then Albanese would not have with the Americans what do you see about his role in the issue during the sun now that he's going to be in Washington it's a good question he has spoken out in favor of a son she's spoken out in favor of freedom of the press he's a big critic of Murdoch post his prime minister ship I might say but I think he'll tow the government line a lot of people are imagining he will take a more independent position but he is the ambassador and I think he recognizes that he will that that's the quid pro quo is that he'll tow the line so I expect he will but at least we know he is predisposed to speaking up in favor of joining an assigned and that's better than where we've been before even though he once had executive power in Australia he will know that his role now is to be and tow the government line on the side what is the government line on the side the government line on a side is to say to the Australian people don't worry we're doing our best we're giving him all this consular support we're into quiet diplomacy behind the scenes we really are talking to people and doing things meanwhile when they have press conferences in Vietnam or somewhere they're talking about Australians who are imprisoned there or in China but assigned no it's quiet diplomacy we couldn't possibly embarrass our friendly allies the US and the UK what are they actually doing well who knows who knows what they're actually doing in opposition the current prime minister Anthony Albanese said enough is enough he has never said that he supports Assange he's never said that he does not think that he ought not to have been put in this position all he says is it's gone on for long enough you know it needs to come to an end but that is a different thing from saying Julian Assange is innocent I support freedom of the press I am going to ask Joe Biden as a friendly ally to drop this whole extradition case that has never been said and so frankly I think it's a pretty weak position to say it's gone on long enough it needs to come to an end without actually supporting the case or the cause so or the person so frankly I think as the pressure builds from Assange supporters in Australia and around the world as the pressure builds on freedom of the press as some of those large newspapers who have finally been embarrassed into coming out and taking a stand and saying he should be free the pressure is building on the prime minister and I think that they are trying to take the temperature of the Australian community and the temperature of the US and they're trying to figure out a way to save face for the US and get Assange freed my big worry is that they're going to try and stitch up some arrangement whereby Assange is extradited to the US and then Australia does some deal to try and get him to serve a sentence at home but as I keep saying that relies on him staying alive and I think it is a highly dangerous game because the priority again is not Julian Assange it is not freedom of the press it's how to find a political deal that saves face for one of our major allies and satisfies an electoral a growing electoral need and pressure to do something about Julian Assange if that were to happen he'd have to stay alive at least 10 years because it would have to be after even a Supreme Court he got that far a decision in his case before Australia could even ask and we who knows what the government will be in 10 years it could be another coalition government I saw Albanese is waiting for the cover of those newspapers coming out to be able to say to go a little further he'd been very vague we're not going to use megaphone diplomacy left everyone in the dark about what he's actually doing in terms of contact and Julian Assange I thought and I think I was wrong but when he first was sworn in as prime minister the next day was on a plane to Japan to meet with Biden and the others and he had leverage right then and Biden was asking him to join this new economic union there and to continue with the quad and is Assange important enough to a man like Albanese to actually say okay Mr. Biden Mr. President you want 50,000 more troops here in Australia well there's this Australian citizen right now in a jail in London I want to talk to you about would they leverage something as important for the United States point of view which is what they really only want to use this country as kind of an aircraft carrier for US regional ambitions would they would is that in Albanese to leverage the military interests of the US in Australia to get Assange home I have seen no evidence that there is the commitment to do that but I hope I'm wrong I'm hope I am wrong and I am constantly calling on the prime minister to use the leverage we have with the US in the alliance that we've got to pressure President Biden to drop the extradition charges to allow Julian Assange to be free but I wouldn't bet on it you know John shift in Julian Assange's father said more than one occasion that this is a winning issue for an Australian politician the population as I mentioned before wants him home they support Julian Assange why why isn't it an easy thing to do to come out and say I want to charge charges dropped I want him home that would help what Australian voters is American interests and cow and sucking up to America more important than winning an election at home and getting votes at home not more important than winning election but I don't think the Assange issue on its own is a sufficient campaign at the moment to to make an election pivot on and I certainly think sucking up to the US and not embarrassing the CIA and not embarrassing Joe Biden is right up there in terms of where the Australian government priorities are and it's a true you know Trump of course Donald Trump was the it was under his administration of this indictment against Assange was issued and the arrest was made and it was seemingly very much motivated by vault seven which embarrassed the CIA and Pompeo had just taken over the CIA director when that happened of course the indictment as Assange mentions nothing about vault seven it mentions nothing about the DNC weeks but from my perspective and I wonder if you agree Joe Biden's pressure from two very powerful forces not to drop this case one being the CIA for the reasons that you said the others did the Democratic National Committee they are still held bent on the idea that it was the was Julian Assange that gave the United States Donald Trump as president which is a huge stretch that completely exonerates everything Julian Hillary Clinton Julia Gillard's friend will kind of a candidate she was what those documents revealed and this is the interesting thing they were true the head of the DNC and four other people resigned when they came out why would they have resigned no one ever has proven that what was written in there was true so it was the voters had a right to know what Hillary Clinton was doing but I think those are the two pressures on Biden will you agree not to drop this case the CIA and his own party of which he's the titular head of oh yeah I think both of those things are true and in terms of the Australian government you know I tried to find out the last few years exactly what the Australian government knew about the spying on Assange that was going on in the embassy and you know at what point were they alerted to it what did they do about it and so on nothing you can never get anything out of anyone about what they knew who they've been talking to in the UK or indeed who they've been talking to in the US so to me it is it has never for the government both Liberal and Labor the issue of freedom of the press the issue of an Australian citizen wrongfully held and incarcerated overseas has never been as important as maintaining a good relationship with the US and not embarrassing the US well Australian leaders must know that in 2010 when your Biden was vice president he told the American television network in fact you can get it on YouTube but in some of the Australian broadcasts of preparation ABC showed this clip and it's still available where he was asked directly you can you indict Julian Assange and vice president Biden in 2010 said no not unless we could prove he actually stole the documents if they were just handed to him as a journalist then we can't do anything guess what they did not the Obama administration did not indict him because they couldn't prove that yeah because they couldn't take on the first amendment that was the thing that they they knew that if they tried it would be a first amendment issue which was a complete acceptance of the fact this was about freedom of the press and they had to then dream up the espionage part of the case which came with Pompeo and Scott Morrison as Prime Minister a year collaborating with Pompeo and suddenly you had the espionage because that was the only basis on which they could try and sustain a case that wasn't a first amendment case and then you had all the lies from the fraudulent fellow from Iceland and all of that it's there've been so many opportunities for the Australian government to come out and just lay it down to the Australian people as to what has gone on but they haven't okay so let's talk about what has been talked which has been on social media and in the media in the last couple of days here in Australia that there's he's going to be released in two months this an abc pharmacist diplomatic correspondent John Lyme was on an interview program on the abc just around new years and he made predictions for 2023 funny enough if you go to the abc website and you look at that clip you only see a few things he's talking about Iran and Afghanistan but he did in fact also talk about Julian Assange and someone put that up on twitter and he said that within two months he believed he would be released now what do you make of this well i don't know what to make of it because it seemed to fit with a pattern of softening up the community for something to happen for Assange because first of all we had had quiet diplomacy quiet diplomacy we're not talking about it and then we had the newspapers coming out all of a sudden um saying actually no it's a freedom of the press issue he should be freed then we had the prime minister say oh well actually i have raised it with the us in a fairly vague way not specifically who he'd raised it with but he had raised it with the us which was a move away from the quiet diplomacy and then you have a prominent abc journalist saying well actually he thinks he'll be released in two months now it's quite a common political tactic to send someone out there to run something up the mast and then to see what the community reaction is before the government then actually does it that happens all the time so when i saw that i thought oh well that's interesting in the light of these other things that's happened i wonder if they're just testing the waters to see what the reaction will be if they make this announcement uh and so i think the jury is out on whether it was just a journalist shirting his mouth off uh as a result of an overheard conversation or whatever else or whether he actually knows something now the rehearsal room is a couple of months previous that there was a plea bargain in the works for Julian Assange that Julian would plead guilty to some minor offense he would then be sent to back to Australia but probably under the condition he couldn't work again as WikiLeaks editor and participate in his work his life work would you know Julian Assange would he ever agree to such a deal i don't see why he would he has sacrificed a large part of his life because he believes in freedom of the press and he is making a very strong point and has suffered beyond anything we can think about for that principle pleading guilty to something he didn't do doesn't seem to me to be in his character unless he's reached a point where he knows his life uh is very much in jeopardy um he has a child two children and a wife now yeah but i i tend to agree with what you just said yeah look i i think he's uh an extraordinary individual he suffered enormously i think stellar is amazing um the support that that she's been able to give him and of course other people who support her but i just can't imagine how terrible it would be to be locked up in Belmarsh prison with the worst of the worst in the most appalling circumstances and he's doing it for a principle he's doing it for a principle um if he did agree to a plea bargain i would be totally sympathetic to that because he suffered enough and he needs to get out and that's exactly how we got David Hicks home from the US from Guantanamo Bay and no one of course thought anything the worst for that just getting him out was what we wanted to do and getting Julian out is what i want to do too but i think i i don't think it's in his character to agree to something in order to be a face saver for the US who have thrown the weight of a nation against him Christine Milne thank you very much for speaking with us on CNL we're here in Hobart Tasmania Australia with Greg Barnes Greg is a senior counselor he's been an advisor to the Australian campaign for Julian Assange for the past 11 years Greg welcome to CNL thank you for giving us your time thank you so you've seen just about everything that's happened in the Julian Assange case from the beginning the ups and the downs and there's been several significant moments but i as we were chatting before we begin the interview you said you indicated this is a very significant moment now but something important could happen what do you think is up right now well i'm going on the fact that you've got a new government in Australia elected last year headed by Anthony Albanese who's made a commitment to ending Assange case he set it on a number of occasions he made a very Australian statement in the Australian Parliament just before Christmas and said that he raised it with the Americans we also saw John Lyons who's a very very senior Australian journalist make a statement around new year in terms of predictions that he expected to see something happen in the first two months of this year that was significant because generally speaking and be the same in the United States when senior journalists make comments like that they're generally speaking well informed that i know John Wellan he's a very considered informed journalist so you know our view i think is that there's now greater momentum because you've got an Australian government that actually cares about this particular citizen and you've got an Australian government that i think understands the leverage that it has because it is the United States closest to ally in this region and one of its closest allies globally now he didn't just say something's happening he said he'd be released well he did he did and and look it was a strong statement and as i say i i respect we respect John and let's see what happens but certainly that statement what was significant about that statement was there was no pushback from the government no one you know as you know Joe if a journalist makes a statement and the government violently disagrees it'll come out and say no that's just not right and this is significant because Lyons is a very senior Australian journalist it's not like a dead journalist making a comment and the government didn't push back on yeah he heard something in Canberra whether was as specific as in two months he'll be out which remains to be seen Albanese had previously refused to be more specific about whatever he was doing he said it was quiet to close he wouldn't use a megaphone and that was it and suddenly he came out and made that strong statement just a few days prior to that the five newspapers that partnered with WikiLeaks in 2010 came out with a pretty strong statement of their own saying the charges should be dropped don't know if they mourned their spiegel the guardian the new york times uh and uh payees in spain and it was only a few days after that Albanese made that remark do you think there was any relationship between the two was that political coverage for him uh look it may it may have been i think it's also the case that uh what he'd said previously in his early days as prime minister was that he didn't want to conduct diplomacy by megaphone and i think people understand that particularly the nature of the alliance between australia and united states i think the point that he was making just prior to christmas is that he's making progress uh and that he was prepared to let australian people know as he should uh that he had in fact raised it with the americans now that is significant in the sense that australian governments often say and governments around the world often say oh well we're making overtures to a foreign government here he was quite explicit um i also suspect uh that uh the biden administration is much closer to this government than it was the previous conservative government in australia and her relations are certainly better and uh it would have more in common with this government uh and i think it takes this government seriously you mentioned the word leverage before which i wanted to focus on what leverage does australia have united states needs things i'm watching yeah i mean they want to send troops here they want you on board with their china policy which is not necessarily in australia's interest at all but yeah absolutely so what is australia what could he how important his assange to i'll be easy to this government that uh how far would they go and especially if it came from military issues were they actually involved that well i mean i can only we can work off a precedent here which was david hicks um david hicks uh for your listeners and viewers was an australian citizen who found himself in guantanamo bay as a result of alleged activities in theaters are more prior to that uh he there was tremendous pressure that came on an inconceivative government of john howe in australia and uh hicks came back to australia was was removed from guantanamo bay by the bush administration came back to australia it has happened uh and it can happen it happened in that case partly because bush regarded how there's been one of his key allies in in the war on terror along the deal along with toddy blare in the case of biden and albanaise the dynamic is different but equally close as you rightly say uh this is the key ally in the region in the asia pacific region particularly in relation to the issues with china australia is now part of the new orcus pact it's of course a key member of the five eyes so and in my discussions with uh certainly uh at least one former australian foreign minister australia does have cachet and leverage in washington because it seemed to be such a reliable ally and a close ally and that in fact does give you leverage when you really want something what wouldn't australia withhold something that the u.s wants in exchange let's face it hicks is not as fun no the united states want to sign to a lot more than yeah he was expendable i don't see a scientist being expendable yeah well uh look i i think i don't want to speculate on that i don't think it's helpful to speculate on i don't want to speculate on it but what i will say is that um this australian government um the albanaise government appears to have a very good relationship uh with uh its u.s counterparts uh and uh one sense is that there's more in common between by the by the administration and this administration both of them are from political parties that are purportedly on the sort of center left uh in terms of the political landscape um and certainly albanaise um is a person who i think would be uh and probably is taken seriously in washington yeah united states will obviously want something in return then i'm just going to let him drop the case tomorrow i don't believe uh if this certainly um there's pressure on biden not to drop this case now it's not as serious as pump air talking about even assassinating or kidnapping doing this launch however even though he was not charged in the indictment with the d democratic national committee emails that were published by rickie leaks nor vault seven the vault seven embarrassed the cia which led to pump air doing that and the democratic party still blames doing the launch for the election of don trump and those for joe biden as the titular head of the democratic party to say tomorrow i'm going to drop the charges and i think would anger the dnc and the cia so he needs something in return and there was in my what i've heard uh two months or so is that there was discussion about possible plea bargain so if the u.s. were to drop the charges they would have to have some i think some kind of a deal with julien assange in which he would no longer work i think that might satisfy the cia and the dnc what have you heard about possible plea deals well again joe i don't want to speculate because uh i think that things are at a sensitive moment uh in australia uh i hear what you say about i think the key points in this case though are that there's a strong view on the part of many australians that this is this case is about freedom of speech and it's about an australian citizen who exposed war serious war crime activity by the united states and that we ought not be going after someone who does that secondly i think there's pressure now from elements of the australian media including senior australian journalists to say wow this could be us next because what the united states is doing as you know is using extraterritorial wedge to go after a person who's not an american citizen who did not set foot in the united states but simply published material embarrass the united states the third point i'd make to you is that um uh this is a case where i think the expectation on the part of australians is that the charges be on the extradition request being drawn and that julian be allowed to return to his family it needs to be remembered that he's now been effectively incarcerated for a period of what now coming into the eleventh year in conditions that have been horrific in the sense that uh he was in the the equatorial embassy with no fresh night uh sunlight for a number of years he's in the notorious belmarsh prison which is an awful place for any person to be let alone a person who's effectively on remand and so in terms of punishment it's done it's been done and so uh our view a very strong view is that uh this this ought to be a case where united states heeds the um efforts of its ally close ally australia and ensures that this matter comes to an end i mean that's what albanese has said that this matter should come to an end he hasn't said oh look let's go and negotiate and see if we can get an outcome here he said this case must come to an end they're unambiguous words and i think australians rightly will be saying yep that's the right thing to do uh for this australian citizen well uh song has been effectively silenced since march of 2018 when the equator in it government the new government shut off his internet so until now he's been silenced he's not been enforced which is what upset clearly the americans so much so it you won't speculate about a p-deal but can you imagine him being free in australia to continue his work one day well i can in the sense that uh and i'll repeat what i've just said that our very strong view in the australian campaign's view is that this is an australian citizen who has done no wrong he was facing an effective death penalty for exercising his right to freedom of speech and for exposing the sort of activity that ought to be exposed and again i don't want to speculate on on the views of the americans on that i hear you and i i mean this is all on the public record what many people in united states say but equally uh as you know joe there are many americans who are very disturbed by the mistreatment of and the persecution of julien assange particularly i think again in the light of the fact that as you mentioned earlier you know you've had the so-called you know a nation which purports to uphold the rule of law effectively saying let's murder one of its agencies saying let's let's murder this bloke that's we're called an assassination but let's murder and and you know you've had the spying on his uh on his lawyers on his meetings extraordinary conduct all of that in itself ought to be telling us that if you if you're serious about democracy you say this is unconscionable this man should be released immediately let him get on with the rest of his life you know you mentioned that uh journalists in australia might think that they're next just a few weeks i believe after his arrest julien's arrest in out of the ecodern embassy in london the afp the australian federal police raided the offices of the abc just a few weeks later and john lyon at that time was tweeting live tweeting about this yeah it was very strongly opposed great to that happen yeah he's not necessarily the most uh critical of weston policy i heard the rest of his interview he's very good on the israel issue okay well i'm going to book his but he knows this he knows this um yeah now john john is what's at stake here absolutely absolutely right and and and you're right about uh john understanding that uh inherently uh and you know other australian journalists have some no tony walker for example former uh foreign correspondent for the financial times and in fact i think demographer of yasser arafat uh is also acutely aware of it and has written about it what's been happening i think with the australian journalists it's been a slow burn issue they've realized uh joe that you know what's at stake when you start reporting on security matters and and what happens in theaters of war is that the security establishment will come after you ah and they will come after you in ways that you wouldn't have imagined and you're right so again for those listeners and watching this interview uh australian journalists were rated uh after there'd been a publication of stories about alleged war crimes in afghanistan there was also another australian journalist uh i think from news limited who was had her house raided same day yeah including with police going through her underwear drawer uh so i think australian journalists who mightn't previously have really thought much about the asan's case will have been that sympathetic say well we get we actually get it what we're finding now is that um whilst previously some australian journalists as i say were somewhat hostile to asan's they got hung up on this issue is he a journalist is he not a journalist which of course is irrelevant uh we did we are finding now though many many australian journalists who are now not only signing petitions supporting asan dove had many who've contacted me to say they've done that but also understanding what's at stake here in terms of journalism and i think the significance of the five leading the five leading newspapers in the world are coming together i think again brings home a fragility of freedom of speech and uh the fragility of journalists operating in the current atmosphere i just had a supplementary question about dan oakes who was also involved the abc journalist yeah the conwealth direction of public prosecutions advised the afp that it is not in the public interest yeah to charge journalists to prosecute journalists does that set a precedent for australia that distinguishes us from the united states and the uk well uh potentially i think kathy though um that was a decision taken by a particular dpp uh correct decision but of course it won't stop the afp going after journalists again i mean all what happened was a dpp did the right thing it said well there's no public interest in this in fact it's dangerous to democracy to it they won't stop the afp i mean you know there's a there's an there's an antipathy between i mean i know this is a senior criminal defense there's an antipathy between the police uh and the media except when the police use the media for their own purposes which they do but i'm not confident that particularly in the absence of a strong bill of rights in this country i'm not confident that we won't see further attempts to prosecute journalists we should add that david mcbride was the whistleblower in the abc case and he's not out of the word no he's not no he's not no he's still going after uh yeah the five newspapers and the new york times in particular may have this may have some effect on the u.s. government's thinking in this case as you're saying uh the journals here are putting pressure perhaps on the australian government my final question grabbing i thank you for your time is you know julian asansh uh you know how committed he is to his work he knew that this could happen in way back in 2010 he said in america tv and he knew what was happening they knew that going to sweden could result in him being extradited to the united states so here he is now he's got a wife he's got children he has a life that's in danger it's in jeopardy and yet from what i know him in he would not very easily give up the right to work to his work that's why he's in prison because of his work he was willing to risk that so knowing him as you know him would he put his life and his family ahead of working again if the terms were you can go free or you could serve the short sentences australia but you could never work again in publications and journalism uh in weekly weeks well that's a choice you shouldn't he should never have to make no person should have to make that choice when they're doing that sort of work uh and uh julian asansh uh in our view has done more than enough time in fact he shouldn't have done it any time at all but he's done more than enough time and that's not a choice that needs to be made or should be made quick orange thank you very much for joining us on cnlife today thanks if you are a consumer of independent news in the first place you should be going to is consortium news and please do try to support them when you can it doesn't have its articles behind a paywall it's free for everyone it's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades i hope that with the public's continuing support of consortium news it will continue for a very long time to come thank you so much