 kind of chilling scene about an Australian citizen who's held effectively an ongoing solitary confinement in a UK high security prison, faces a lifetime of further detention and I would argue effective torture in a US high security prison under a law that the US Congress passed which purports to say no matter where on the planet you are, no matter whether you have a connection to the United States, legal obligation to the United States, no matter where, no matter when. If you spill their secrets they're going to hunt you down, they're going to find you, they're going to persecute you, they're going to drag you back to their country, they're going to try you in secret and they're going to keep you in jail forever and what does our government said about that? Our government said oh well we can't interfere with the rule of law. If that's the rule of law on this planet, they're in a hell of a lot of trouble aren't they? And if our government accedes to that claim by the United States without a whimper, without any objection and just said that's fine, pluck Australian citizens wherever you find them, try them in your effective military courts and jail them forever for spilling your secrets we're fine with that. Could you imagine a sort of more supine relationship between Australia and the United States? Well I can't, it kind of demonstrates the problem of the relationship. It demonstrates why we're in a 368 billion dollar hole with AUKUS. It demonstrates why we're joining them as best as they can to bomb people in Yemen. It demonstrates why we say nothing about the genocide and the violence in Gaza. It demonstrates why we have a big job to here in this country to change our government and to genuinely have an independent and principled Australian foreign policy. But if we could go back to Julian, what is Julian's actual crime? What is the crime that the United States has identified in their judicial overreach in this case? Well the crime they've identified is that Julian did spill the secrets. He told the truth and the problem we're talking about Julian Assange is where, how far back in time do you go to sort of ground the merits of the case? Well I suppose you go back to the Iraq war and you think about the vicious brutal crimes of the US Occupy and Military. They're shooting dead Reuters journalists capturing it on film, killing the rescuers, doing it with a kind of brutal indifference and capturing it on film. And Julian's crime wasn't the killing or the brutal indifference or the rules of engagement that let that happen or the system that permitted that invasion. Julian's crime is telling us about it. And the same about the cables that went back and forth that showed the true underbelly of the US international and foreign relations about how it was about self interest and power, not about truth and justice in the American way. And his crime was telling us about it and embarrassing and spilling the secrets of the United States and that's what he's charged with and we should always remember that. And if you're ever wondering about why we're also head up about this, well in a world that's spinning into yet more Western driven conflicts, not all but many of the Western driven conflicts. In a world that seems keen to follow the United States in a war in the Middle East or a war in the South China Sea, surely more than ever we should be prizing, not punishing those who tell the truth about it and allow us to see a different way forward that doesn't involve us as the deputy sheriff of the United States in their endless, endless wars. Of course we should. But why don't we just roll through now to September of this year. And in September of this year I had the benefit of going on a cross-party delegation to the US to speak directly with members of Congress over there, Senators and House of Reps alike. With a, you know, let's be clear, a kind of rainbow coalition of Australian politicians all the way from Barnaby, Joyce on one side to Manik Ryan and myself and my good friend Peter Wish Wilson, a Green Senator from Tasmania, as well as Labor MP Tony Zappio. And although we came from very different political backgrounds and Barnaby Joyce himself says he doesn't much like Julian Assange, but partly for the reasons that I articulated about US overreach, he said, well, surely our government should be sticking up for that and saying that shouldn't happen. Barnaby and I are like a 12 hour clock, you know, we agree once, once a day. We agree on that. And interestingly, when we went to Washington, the reason we went there was because we thought it had died down. And we know that the extradition was coming to a head of steam. There was a chance that the proceedings in the UK could have come on at the end of last year. And we wanted to talk across Congress. It didn't matter whether they were Democrat, independent or Republican. It didn't matter if they were far right, far left, middle. We wanted to talk with members of Congress. And interestingly, with the rainbow coalition that we took over there, we kind of had somebody who could talk to anybody in Congress. And that kind of helped. And I've got to tell you from the far right of the Republicans to the very progressive left of the Democrats, there was real buying in this and a real acknowledgement about the unfairness and a real acknowledgement from the US of two things I thought from the progressive left, many of the issues that I've spoken about about telling the truth, about being honest about US war making and being honest about the way the world operates. And from the right of a real engagement with First Amendment rights, the right to speak the truth, the right to hold governments to account without being put in jail about it. And there's a very real argument at the moment about whether or not those First Amendment rights apply to a foreign and the US administration is saying, oh, First Amendment rights only apply to US citizens, and they can do whatever the hell they like with foreigners. And in a world of global media, in a world of global accountability, I can tell you that causes a lot of angst to many politicians left and right in the United States. So having undertaken that trip, but I want to credit the Assange campaign for funding that and making it possible, we thought, well, have we started a bit of a fire there? You know, have we started some spot fires about it? And I'm pleased to say that we have. Because it was in November that we saw two of the representatives that we caught up with. One, a moderate Republican, Jim McGovern. Some people might call him a progressive Republican. It depends where you call him from Australian political spectrum or the US, but Jim McGovern and Thomas Massey are Republican. They pulled together a public letter, an open letter to the Biden administration, which ended up being signed by 16 members of Congress. And again, from across the political spectrum, saying to the Biden administration First Amendment rights here, First Amendment rights, the right to tell the truth, to tell truth to power, stop the prosecution. This is an independent journalist trying to be a journalist and that should not be a crime under the United States law or pull the prosecution. And they followed that up with a resolution in December that's been put to the floor of Congress. Now interestingly, while this was all happening, US politics was in a complete whirlwind. They were throwing out speakers, they weren't passing budgets, they were they were engaging in some pretty brutal domestic politics. And pretty much nothing was uniting United States politics. So I think we should reflect upon the fact that there's now this issue of Julian Assange actually uniting US politics from progressive to Republicans. And the Biden administration is looking increasingly vulnerable in their ongoing prosecutions. And and and that's been followed up by yet more representations in January. Again, cross party representations in Congress putting Biden on the line. So plan A is to get the United States to pull the prosecution to acknowledge that they'll be ongoing domestic grief to the Biden administration if they continue. And if there is a change of administration that that will pull in and stop the prosecution. That's plan A to end the prosecution from the US perspective. But plan B is to kill the prosecution off in the UK. And that's why in January of this year, I myself as one of the co conveners of the bring Julian Assange home parliamentary group together with Andrew Wilkie, an independent MP and I think a courageous whistleblower himself, Bridget Archer from the Liberal Party. I won't praise Bridget because that never helps her in her struggles inside the Liberal Party. But Bridget is a person of genuine decency. Josh Wilson, a Labor Party MP and myself as the Greens, Defence and Justice folks, and all co chairs of the parliamentary group wrote to the UK Home Secretary. And I'll be you can find it online. I think copies have been shared around to be pleased and I was a brief letter. It's always a challenge when you're working with Ford to get a brief letter. We got a brief letter together to James Cleverly, the UK Secretary of State. And in that we said something pretty straightforward. That the law in the UK has moved on since the appeal court rejected Julian's appeal on Assange. Because at the core of Julian's case has been amongst other things. That if he is extradited to the US and faces ongoing detention in some pretty brutal federal prisons, ongoing isolation from his family, his health is at very serious risk. This endless prosecution that he faces. And in the appeal decision, the appeal court said they didn't have to worry about identifying or proving those facts. They could rely upon the bare assurances given by the United States and accepted by the UK that he'd be fine. So a bare assurance is fine. And they didn't test it and they said that they didn't have to go beyond those assurances. And to the extent the trial judge went beyond the assurances and actually was anxious about his health and said that he faced very, very serious health consequences. And we know that couldn't possibly include the loss of his life. The Chief Eleanor should have just relied upon the assurances. You don't have to go beyond that. Well, since then, the UK Supreme Court, which is their highest court, in the case of AAA, via the Secretary of State for the Home Department, admittedly in a slightly different context, in a refugee context. But when considering the UK's proposal to follow some pretty cooked Australian precedent and jail anybody who arrives seeking refugee status on a boat, and in this case send them off to Rwanda for resettlement in Rwanda, in that case, the Supreme Court said, you can't just rely upon the assurances of the Rwandan government and you can't just rely upon the assurances of the UK government having accepted the assurances of the Rwandan government. Courts have to test whether or not, if someone's got to be sent back to another country in these circumstances, they have to test the truth. They have to make their own determination. And I've got to tell you, thank goodness the Supreme Court made that finding, because we've found out very recently that at the same time as the UK government was in the Supreme Court saying, no, no, no, rely on the assurances. Don't have to test it. It's fine. Look, here's a release from us and there's a release from the Rwandan government. It'll be fine in Rwanda. At the same time as that was happening, the UK government was granting refugee status to at least four Rwandans because they had significant fear of ongoing persecution in Rwanda. They were doing the two things at the same time. The reason being, you shouldn't just trust no court should accept a bearish political assertion from a government when the court's obligation is to actually look to an individual's rights. And in the case of Julian Assange, his right to life, I think, is pretty much up there that should be considered by the UK courts. So we said, and Peter read it out at the beginning, we said to James Cleverlet, do your job in a polite way and a respectful way. It's not our job to direct the UK government, but we said we think you should do your job. And we said to this end, we are requesting that you undertake an urgent, thorough and independent assessment of the risk to Mr Assange's health and welfare in the event he's extradited to the United States. Consistent with the decision in triple A, it appears to us that such independent investigation should include a close review of the risks to Mr Assange's health, life and well-being through prolonged attention in one or more high security US detention facilities. Well, of course they should. Now in three weeks' time, we will find out if that has been done. In three weeks' time, we'll find out if the UK government accepts that that should be part of the consideration in Julian Assange's week. But I have to say, in three weeks' time, we're likely to still see an Australian government that thinks this is all okay, that it's the rule of law and they can just let an Australian citizen be brutalised like that. Well, I disagree. Let's keep the struggle alive. Let's bring Julianna. Thanks very much.