 pleasure to join you here today. I would like to thank the National Press Club for inviting me to speak here with you. Since I touched down in Sydney I have been greeted with enormous warmth and although it is my first time coming to Australia I do not feel like a stranger to these shores. Julian's stories have acquired a sharper resolution in my mind and I can better understand why he misses home so much. The truth is that I have mixed emotions about being here because I had always imagined my first visit to be with Julian and the children. I could not bring them because I am here to speak to you today and I am at the rally on Wednesday in Sydney before I return to London. My visit here was originally prompted by the official visit of President Biden and the Quad Summit. After it was cancelled I decided to come anyway. I did not want to lose the opportunity to speak to you because we are now in the end game. Julian needs his freedom urgently and Australia plays a crucial role in securing his release. I recognize many faces in the room today who have played a crucial role in the fight for the freedom of my husband. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Australian parliamentary friends of Julian Assange who have created a political environment in which support for Julian goes beyond party political affiliation. The show of unity has made it possible for the leadership to take a position. I wish to thank the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as well as the leader of the opposition Peter Dutton for putting that position on the record. That Julian should be released so that he can come home, home to his family, home to Australia. I want to thank the Australian press for keeping Julian's case alive in the minds of the Australian public. But above all I would like to thank the overwhelming dedication of the Australian people who have brought about a sea change in awareness and solidarity for Julian's plight. This unity and support for my husband is a source of enormous encouragement for our family. It nurtures Julian's ability to continue on. The reality is that to regain his freedom Julian needs the support of his home country. This is a political case and it needs a political solution. I am often asked what Julian's day to day is like and what we talk about. Yes, we spend time talking about the intricacies of the legal arguments or the political developments that influence the case. But most of the time we talk about the past and about our future together. His past is here. He tells our children how he would catch yabbies and go fishing for flathead and blackfish. In the Sandin River with his grandfather Warren or how he reared a fledgling rainbow lorikeet when he lived on magnetic island when he was 13. He fed the lorikeet on mangoes until it was strong enough to rejoin the wild. He tells the children about Tilly, the chestnut coated mare which he would ride when he stayed in the northern rivers or how he surfed in Byron Bay as a teenager. He tells them about his beekeeping in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria. That's how I imagine Julian when he is free. Not behind the cold blue glare of a computer screen. But cycling through Melbourne like he used to do are feeling his bare feet sink into the cool sand like I did yesterday on Bondi Beach. Today Julian's feet only ever feel the hard, dull, even cement on the prison floor. When he goes to the yard for exercise there is no grass, no sand. Just the bitumen pavements surrounded by cameras and layers of razor wire overhead. I can tell you exactly what Julian is doing right now. It is 3 a.m. in London. Julian is lying in his cell probably awake trying to fall asleep. It's where he spends 22 hours a day every day. Julian's cell is about 3 by 2 meters. He uses some of his books to block out the unpleasant draft coming from the window in the cold winter nights. There are pictures on the walls, pictures of our children, pictures of us together. A large colorful poster of a nebula taken by NASA's James Webb telescope. A chart showing the distance between London and European cities so that he can make the distance to Brussels, Vienna, and Lisbon pacing up and down the length of his cell. He has worn out two pairs of sneakers walking the European continent in his cell. He reads to keep his mind busy to fight the crushing sense of isolation and of time wasting away. He has spent 1,502 days in this prison cell with no end in sight and no way of knowing how many days to count down to his release. Julian will be in that cell indefinitely unless he's released. If Julian is extradited he will be buried in the deepest darkest hole of the US prison system. Isolated forever. That is what is done to defendants in so-called national security cases even before trial. A 175-year sentence is a living death sentence. A prospect so desperate that the English court found that it would drive him to take his own life rather than live forever in hell. We must do everything we can to ensure that Julian never ever sets foot in a US prison. Extradition in this case is a matter of life and death. Julian counts the days until our next visit. When the children and I get to Belmarsh, usually on a weekend, we leave our belongings in a locker, we check in with the prison authorities in the visitors' center building. My fingerprint is scanned and we get a stamp on the back of our hands. Then we head to the entrance of His Majesty's prison, Belmarsh. The only thing we are allowed to have in our hands is a VO or a visitor's order. It lists the people who are authorized to visit Julian on that day. We stand in endless queues. Max, who recently turned four, used to call the prison the queue. When are we seeing Daddy in the queue, Mama? Now he is coming to better understand what a prison is, but not quite. When I travel, like now, he asks me, when are you back from work prison, Mama? Gabriel, who just turned six, knows it's a prison. Prisons feature in his dreams and in his nightmares. I tell him his father is no ordinary prisoner. He is a hero and millions of people around the world want him to come back to us. My fingerprints are scanned three times more as we make our way through the airlocks. After the first airlock, our shoes and jackets are put through an X-ray machine. A prison officer scams us each in turn with a magnetic wand, front and back and under our feet. Then a second prison officer pats us down, front and back, under our feet again. They check our hair, inside our mouths, behind our ears. Then we go to the second airlock, which lets us out onto a cement yard. We cross the yard and queue up once more to get into the interior building and the third airlock, after which we are let through to the dog search. We stand on a square. The children are told to stand still and be quiet while the dog jumps up to sniff us, front and back. Then finally, we are let through to the large visitor hall, where Julian is sitting at one of 40 tables. Julian sits on a red chair opposite three blue chairs. A heavy table is in between us. The children race to him, shrieking gleefully, while the prison officer complains that the children should remain quietly by my side until my fingerprint is scanned once more. At the table, Julian and I are allowed to embrace hello and goodbye. We are allowed to hold each other's hands across the table. The children climb on him and he reads them stories. All our children's memories with their father are in this one large, echoey visitors hall, with the one exception of our wedding last year, which took place in a bare room in a different building inside the prison. For an hour and a half, once or twice a week, we are together as a family. There is now near universal recognition of the enormous implications that this case has for press freedom and the future of democracy. For most people, Julian is a symbol, a symbol of staggering injustice, because he is in prison on trumped up charges for exposing the crimes of others. A symbol because he faces a bewildering 175 year sentence for publishing the truth. A symbol of a sophisticated form of state violence dressed up in complexity and indirection that not even Franz Kafka could have imagined. For the press and the public, Julian's case is the most brutal attack on press freedom that the western world has seen in the last 70 years. A foreign government is using the political offenses in its statute books to indict a foreign national abroad because of what he or she published in a different country. Accurate, damning publications exposing their war crimes. If sovereignty is to mean anything, if jurisdiction is a proper legal and political reality, the case of Julian, the case against Julian cannot be understood as anything other than an absurdity. A stupefying decision of egregious overreach. The case is the worst and most enduring legacy of the Trump administration. It is not just outlandish, but extremely pernicious. Julian is being used as a deterrent to bully journalists into submission. The case against him sends the message that each of you in this room are fair game. It is a show of contempt for democratic accountability and of the rights of victims of government wrongdoing. For all the talk of press freedom as necessary in a democratic society, the case against Julian provides a gaping hole through which any country can legitimize the imprisonment of journalists and dissidents, including other Australian journalists, and use it they do. Russia's charges against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich mirror the charges the US has brought against Julian. Russia had not used the Espionage Act against a foreign journalist since 1987. For almost 40 years Russia had expelled foreign journalists, but now it puts them on trial for espionage. America's case against Julian has created a new race to the bottom, a new normal, which makes it easier to get away with imprisoning journalists. Enough is enough. There is no time left to lose. Julian needs to come home to us, home to all of us. Please help bring us back together. Thank you. Stella, thank you very much for that address, and your sentiments are heartfelt. There are many watching here today with us now, but right around Australia that know if a family member of theirs was in the circumstances that Julian is in, that they would have those same sentiments. Can we get to the nub of this? Lawyers, someone signed the paper. Can you take us back to the initial charges of the United States that they transferred to the United Kingdom in a document known as an extradition document? When was that done, and by whom? Well, probably Jen should answer this question, but the timing is important. The charge brought against Julian, the extradition, the request to arrest him to the United Kingdom was issued in December 2017, over a year before he was arrested. And Jen? So we had warned for over a decade that Julian would face a US extradition request, and many people said that he was paranoid or this was not going to happen, and that's why he saw asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. Of course, the moment he was arrested inside the embassy on the original charge of breach of bail, he was immediately served with the US extradition request. Now that was followed, we didn't, we weren't in a position to know about that, that was followed by a department of justice press release claiming that he was being charged with hacking. There's no allegation of hacking on the face of the US indictment, let me make that clear. This is about receipt, possession and publication of information. A few months later we received the superseding indictment, which laid on 17 separate charges under the Espionage Act, bringing the total charge into 175 years. So this is the first time in US history that a US administration has sought to prosecute a publisher for publishing truthful information. We've seen the Espionage Act used against those who had obligations to government, including Daniel Ellsberg historically for the Pentagon papers, a case that was ultimately thrown out because of abuse of process by the Nixon administration. Julian faces similar charges as a publisher which crosses a new legal threshold under the First Amendment of the Constitution and in circumstances where we've seen far worse abuse than what Daniel Ellsberg suffered under the Nixon administration under Trump, spying on us as lawyers, seizing legally privileged material, spying on Julian and his medical professionals, political interference, the list goes on, but in this day and age this case continues. Why? That is an excellent question now that we have President Biden as president. The Obama administration chose not to prosecute Julian because of what they described as the New York Times problem, which is what we have been identifying for the media since 2010. If you criminalize what Julian Assange did, which is what mainstream media organizations do all day every day, you are criminalizing journalism and that precedent will be used against others. It is criminalizing public interest journalistic activity. That is what we've heard from the Washington Post and it's what we've heard from the New York Times. That position is clear. The Biden administration has a policy not to prosecute members of the news media. That is their state of position. So this prosecution under the DOJ's own guidelines violates that policy, but what the Biden administration is saying is that well this was started under Trump, they politicized the DOJ to run this prosecution and we're not going to politicize the DOJ so we're going to let it hang and let it continue. And in our view, this is an unsustainable position and this is not a trial that any media organization and I think any US administration would want to see take place in the United States because they are not going to want to see what we have to say about this case and to have that dragged out in their courts. Stella, you just phoned in from London. You were there with thousands of free Julian Assange supporters that say circled Westminster, the parliament buildings of the United Kingdom. I have a night in Africa, the free Julian, a fight to free Julian Assange documentary, went to where you were just in Washington last week. What is the mood in London regarding Assange? What is the mood in Washington? We certainly know what the mood is like here in Canberra and this room. Stella? Well in October we encircled Westminster and if you know what the houses of parliament look like they're on the Thames which meant we couldn't go in the river so we had to cross the river. We needed at least 5,000 people to make that hands around parliament and we exceeded it by far and the way we did it was basically just calling on people to come on the day at that time and we were quite nervous before because you never know if these things are going to work or not but it was an enormous success and what it proved was that there is enormous support for Julian including in the UK and we're very encouraged by the fact that ITV which is a UK terrestrial channel decided to broadcast Ithaca last night and hopefully that will also break into other parts of the of the public that haven't been exposed because what we've found is that as soon as people actually understand what's happening they are moved they're moved they connect with the with our family they connect with Julian and they feel this injustice as if it is their own and they want to come out and they reject what's being done to Julian and you can watch it if you're on ABC5 view which is wonderful here in Australia you're in Washington we've got a brand new Australian ambassador to the United States a former foreign minister no less and prime minister Kevin Rudd how often does Assange come up in conversation in those halls of Washington well I think the first thing to say is that we are very pleased that the Australian government our prime minister and the ambassador Kevin Rudd in the US have made very clear the position that enough is enough and this case has to be brought to an end and it's important that we continue to keep the pressure on our government to continue to make this case a political priority it is getting in the way of the US-Australian relationship which is an important one and if we can get that resolve this case then all the better for our relationship the feeling in DC I think is that there is a significant concern on the hill about the first amendment ramifications of this case over and above the fact that he's an Australian citizen so the interest in DC is quite different than it is for us here in Australia about it being about an Australian citizen it's about the first amendment it's about what it means for the news media there we've seen a group of democratic members of Congress right to Biden asking for the case to be dropped which I think is a sign of the growing concern there in the United States for the same reasons but the the political support crosses the aisle so we've got supporters on the Republican side on the Democrat side this is a case that cuts across those political divides and unifies people across that divide around what is a fundamental question about first amendment democracy but there's more work to be done there for sure and 48 Australian members of parliament and senators some of them in the room today have also written to Merrick Garland the Attorney General of the United States it would be great if the Attorney General had the courtesy to reply our first question comes from Julie here the Australian financial review thank you so much for your speech Stella welcome Ms Robinson as I was driving here this morning I heard this line that struck me as quite relevant to this situation and it said mythology is wholly dependent on who is telling the story I just want to take you back to before the 2016 US federal election when Julian made the decision to release emails from Hillary Clinton's private server email server that had an impact on the US federal election I think some could argue that it was interference in the democratic processes how has this damaged the Assange brand and how do you justify that decision when and wasn't just contempt for Clinton and it gave us Trump it helped give us Trump so sorry it was a bit of a garbled question but thank you yes WikiLeaks published two actually three democratic party related publications in 2016 the first was a republication actually of freedom of information act documents that had been released by the state department but were not easily searchable the second was the democratic national committee emails and the third was Podesta the Podesta emails and what these publications revealed was how the Hillary Clinton campaign had basically rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders and at the time the polling showed that Bernie Sanders if it was a Bernie Sanders versus Trump election that Bernie Sanders would have won but if Hillary Clinton ran against sorry if it were Bernie Sanders versus Trump Bernie Sanders would have won and if it were Hillary Clinton versus Trump Trump would have won so the polling was already clear at the time which is actually included in the emails and yet the Clinton campaign lobbied the media and it's clear from the emails to not give visibility to Bernie Sanders and to favor the Clinton campaign the second way in which the Hillary Clinton campaign rigged the primaries was effectively rigging the republican primaries by again lobbying their media contacts to give Donald Trump more visibility than his contenders so it was called the Peter the Pied Piper strategy in which the Clinton campaign estimated that if they were to give more visibility to the more the outliers of the republican primaries then the democrats would have a higher chance of winning of course that was a tremendous miscalculation what they did was give more airtime to Trump and ultimately he won the election now the garden actually did an interview sorry the BBC did an interview with the editor in chief of the New York Times Dean Backe and he was asked this question about whether he would have published the DNC and Podesta emails and Dean Backe said if we had received them we would have published them we couldn't we wouldn't be able to justify withholding from the public important information about about a contender in the elections and this was again confirmed in a court case actually the the democratic national committee tried to sue Julian for publishing the DNC emails and in the southern district of New York and the judge judge co-etul throughout the case and he threw it out on the basis that those publications which WikiLeaks published about the democratic national committee were of the highest importance that withholding that information from the American electorate would have been wrong and that it had the highest protection of the First Amendment of course the Clinton campaign used attacked WikiLeaks over her loss but the reality is that what those publications showed was the undermining of the democratic process within the democratic party and ultimately the U.S. elections thank you thank you thank you both for your remarks here thank you for being here today such an important issue at the moment I wanted to ask you about something at the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said recently he was asked on 730 on ABC by Laura Jingle the president here at the club obviously about this case and his remarks included saying we've made our views very clear to the U.S. administration will continue to do so the solution needs to be found that brings this matter to a conclusion and Mr Assange needs to be part of that of course since I'm hopeful the back will occur it's been too long and in my view as I've said before I see nothing has served from the further incarceration of Mr Assange now this is the position of Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister I'm interested in both your views on whether that's enough what is it that you think maybe needed in addition to these stated positions from the Australian government is there something that's not being done that can make a difference because we now know that Anthony Albanese he does not believe the incarceration should continue and yet it does continue what else should be done Stella well it is a I am just Julian's wife I cannot tell the Australian government how to conduct its diplomacy obviously it's not just public statements but what is happening behind the scenes that that needs to occur to secure Julian's release it's clear that in a political case there's no there's no in a political case if there's political will a solution will be found it's up to the principles to find that solution as I said we're very pleased the Australian government has come out and made clear their position but of course we need action and what that action looks like is making sure that it's being raised with the United States government at every level and with all relevant client agencies involved in this case to make clear that this case is a problem for the Australian government and needs to be resolved of course we continue to have our outreach with the Department of Justice and have called for the case to be dropped we continue to call for the case to be dropped for the reasons I've explained the first amendment complicate the first amendment consequences the fact that this violates the Biden administration's own policy against prosecuting members of the media and that this this is a prosecution that was started for political reasons and should be put to an end so the Australian government can be supporting us and continuing to support us and we have to make sure that they continue to make it a top political priority in the US-Australian relationship does that mean that ultimately it will be decided by a public campaign in the United States given the US issues that you're talking about press freedoms and so forth that really that's where the campaign has to be wild on the ground in the US both here and in the US so we have to make sure that the our parliament continues to keep putting pressure on the government to make sure that it remains a political priority but of course it requires the work of our embassy in DC thanks thank you David our next question is brownie speed from the OBC thank you both for being here today you mentioned in your speech that this is the end game of your husband's case and this is a political case it needs a political solution and you thank the prime minister and the opposition leader for putting their positions on the record do you agree with some supporters of your husband that Australia has been engaging in quiet diplomacy for too long up until recently or do you can see that there are in fact limits of what diplomacy can actually achieve look Australia is the United States most important ally that's clear maybe this wasn't the case 10 years ago so it's important to recognize that that Australia plays an important role and can secure Julian's release I'm Julian's life is in the hands of the Australian government and it's not my place to tell the Australian government how to do it but it must be done Julian has to be released and I I place hope in in Anthony Albanese's will to make it happen I I have to this is the closest we've ever been to securing Julian's release and I I want to encourage and do everything in my power to help that happen I want to take us to the fact that the Australian High Commissioner in London is a former Defense Minister serving member of the Australian Parliament and Stephen Smith a former Prime Minister of the country former Foreign Minister and Kevin Rudd is the Australia's man in Washington to the point about quiet diplomacy there is no question that Mr Albanese has brought this to President Biden's attention but President Biden when he was Vice President said that Julian Assange is a high-tech terrorist Washington have they changed their view well I want to clarify the position President Biden was given a choice between two options in that interview he was asked do you think Julian Assange is a high-tech terrorist or a free speech hero so it wasn't an answer that he offered up himself and I think it's important that we recognize the context in which that comment was made I certainly think that there has been a change in DC and in the United States we have mainstream media organizations calling for this to be dropped unanimous support from free speech and human rights organizations from the ACLU to the committee to protect journalists and so on the momentum has completely changed here we've got our government raising the question our Prime Minister raising the question the leader of the opposition raising the question our parliamentary group friends of Assange raising it across the board and have huge numbers now in parliament calling for this to be dropped it has completely changed and we feel a new momentum around resolving the case and we certainly hope that it will happen sooner rather than later and we need the government to get that done Stella was there a moment in time where you thought if President Biden and Anthony Albanese the Australian Prime Minister was sitting in Sydney at the Quad and that there may have been a concession from the leader of the free world on soil here in Sydney was that a faint hope for you and Julian that that may have been where we were headed this way well I hope that those conversations have occurred in Japan where where they both coincided I think you know it's it's not for Biden to work out the exact process through which Julian is freed but what is needed is a signal from Biden that this is needs to be resolved and I think that the case is seen as an enormous burden for the United States as Jen was saying it was it has always been seen as an extremely controversial case Obama did not bring this prosecution on the same facts he said it's too dangerous Julian Assange is not a hacker he's a publisher bringing a case against Assange would set a precedent for the rest of the press and this administration is not willing to do that what happened the Trump administration was willing to do that so for the Biden administration you know Biden was part of the Obama administration and there has always been unease around this case within the Department of Justice even during the Trump administration two of the attorneys who are working prosecutors who are working on the case were taken off the case because they disagreed with the Espionage Act charges within the Department of Justice there is a recognition that this case is dangerous that it poses enormous danger to the First Amendment and that happens within the Biden administration as well for sure we know that we know that there is that this case is not at all popular because it's seen as a Trump legacy but also because there are people within the administration like Obama in his day who view this case as dangerous and so that is that is what needs to be understood you're not you're not faced with an administration that is monolithic on this case actually this case is internally controversial and there is a lot of significant sense within the administration that it needs to be it needs to end it's an inconvenience it's a problem it's a Trump legacy and the press doesn't like it the New York Times the Washington Post the Guardian etc have all put out statements saying this very thing they they're not publishing everything they would publish if Julian were not in prison because their lawyers look at the case and they say they can prosecute you under the same basis that they're going after a song they can put you in prison or we're going to spend millions defending this case it's not worth it so that's that's the current status quo our next question is Melissa Cove from the Mandarin hello Melissa Cove from the Mandarin my question is about this big idea of truth that you you both speak to both with respect to the freedom of press issue but also threat to democracy every time I hear about issues pertaining to Julian Assange I think about those unnamed civilians who are gunned down in that in that Apache helicopter and we talk about his very sincere personal plight and that which has affected his family and also the serious potential ramifications to the media but truth and the reason why transparency when it comes to very powerful government decisions is also critical so my first part of my question is how much do those sort of considerations play into the political strategy of your team in securing Julian's freedom but the second part of my question goes to deterrence both specific in general if we think about the objective of detaining Julian is deterrence they've already won he's been detained for a long time and potentially how he's being treated by the authorities would also deter others from doing the same so in that vein if you could go back in time and advise him to leak the documents would you and if you still would would you tell him to do it in a different way which might not expose him to everything that has come to pass I think we need to recognize that we're in a much worse situation in terms of press freedom the public's right to know citizens rights uh then we were in 2010 when when WikiLeaks published about the Iraq and Afghan wars the publications that Julian is now being prosecuted for those publications that moment in time represented probably press freedom at its strongest internet freedom at its strongest and since then we've seen a series of legislative moves across the five eyes but elsewhere as well to stop that kind of thing in different ways and also to limit citizens freedoms in many different areas so I think the publication was right for the time and you know Julian wasn't prosecuted he wasn't indicted until 2017 so we're in a much worse position now than we used to be and that's why it is so important to reverse course because it's not just Julian uh the implications of this case mean that we're we're diverging from these protections that used to exist and unless we correct it we're just going deeper and deeper into a far removed from from you know from where we used to be from press freedom at its strongest from from our citizens freedom at their strongest and at the same time it's not just that our freedoms are being limited it is that the state has become enormously more powerful through surveillance tools and so on so our rights as as the citizens as our rights as the public we need to defend those because that's all we have and that of course the ability to speak the truth to publish the truth is central to that to your question about the the nature and the subject matter of the publications we did in the context of the expedition proceedings try to raise raise the importance of the nature of the publications and what they revealed in talking about the free speech protections that that do apply and should apply in the context of the expedition case so I do think it's important to remind the Australian public what these publications were actually about so whether we talk about thank you for raising collateral murder which was Americans killing civilians and members of the news media Reuters journalists whether we talk about the fact that those publications show that there were significantly high numbers of civilian deaths in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan and the US government was ever publicly acknowledging those materials have been used in international courts and tribunals I cited WikiLeaks cables in the International Court of Justice and the Chagos proceedings which actually found that Mauritius is unlawfully the Chagosans are unlawfully occupied by the by the United States and the United Kingdom these are important publications and that gets lost in the conversation about Julian it's really important that we continue to raise it these are war clear award winning publications he won WikiLeaks won the most outstanding contribution to journalism award in 2011 in this country for the very same publications for which Julian sits in prison and faces 175 years in a US prison and we cannot forget that fact our next question is Rhiannon down from the Australian newspaper thank you for your speech Rhiannon down from the Australian newspaper Julian Assange has long defended his actions by saying he's a journalist however much of the leaked information he has published came from Russia and had a major impact on the US election would it be acceptable for me as a journalist to publish stolen emails about an Australian politician supplied by China and what would you say in response to criticisms that he is a propagandist for Russia are there obligations for him as a journalist to verify his sources and their motives well thanks for your question of course those claims are completely baseless um Julian has only ever published the truth nothing that WikiLeaks has published has ever been shown to be false as for the 2016 publications Julian has stated that they are not from Russia and I think it's important to recognize as did the southern district court of New York that if the information is of public importance and this leads very publications that you raise the judge said were of the highest public importance to the American people then they have to be protected and in the United States I'm not familiar with with the law in Australia but in the United States if the journalist receives information then they are free to publish it regardless of how the source obtained it and of course WikiLeaks is a publication that has never revealed its sources and that has a encrypted dropbox where people can send information anonymously and that information is protected through layers of encryption so I think the principle of if information is true and if it belongs in the public domain it should be published and that publication should be protected is a very valuable principle in a democracy you studied law here in the national capital of the Australian National University you do have some experience of the Australian legal system you know most recently whistleblowers delivered starkly evidence about the operations of the Medicare system here in this country and health awards were won by some extraordinary journalists whistleblower protections Peter Graster who was banged up in an Egyptian prison for more than 500 days is fighting for more protections for whistleblowers and particularly journalists what needs to change in terms of legislation and protection so that these fine members of the House of Representatives and Senate can action the kind of changes needed so that the public are told the truth well I think there are significant concerns here in Australia about the nature of our laws on disclosure and the penalties that apply to the publication of national defense information Australia has some of the most significant sentences anywhere in the world where it's certainly in western liberal democracies when it comes to potential sentences for releasing information and that has a chilling effect on our ability to receive the truth so we do need to have public interest defences both for journalists and for whistleblowers inside government who make this information available we rely on whistleblowers free speech protections require that we have journalistic protection for sources for that very reason because we acknowledge that people within government play a very important role in revealing information in the public interest that is being hidden in the public interest for the for us to be able to hold government to account and that should apply in the national defense context as in any other our next question Sarah Tometska from SBS thank you both for your time here I also wanted to quote the Prime Minister in an ABC interview with Steve Canaan earlier this month he said he won't get into the argument about whether he thinks what Julian Assange did was right or wrong but that enough is enough and then he said I am a big supporter of press freedom but with that also comes a responsibility to take into account the consequences of weather information which is not available to the public what consequences it would have if we just have a free for all do you accept his position that Julian Assange put people's lives at risk and do you find that position contradictory in the way the Prime Minister is going about his political negotiations and would you call on him to have a position on whether he thinks what he did was right or wrong well that quote does not say in that quote the Prime Minister doesn't say that Julian put lives at risk there is a part of it where he says you know which there are national security concerns and we would have concerns about Australia right and he's the Prime Minister of Australia and it is natural that the Prime Minister of Australia would say that we all have different roles in society journalists roles the role of the journalist is to publish information that is of relevance to the public and no one would expect the Prime Minister to to have the position of the journalist and no journalist should have to have the position of the defense minister for example in the in the extradition hearing there was a lot of testimony and evidence about WikiLeaks and those publications and how responsible WikiLeaks was and Julian was in conducting those publications and for the people who were working with Julian from various publications like Josh Spiegel they witnessed how careful Julian was with the content of the publications there were reductions in the Afghan war diaries in the Iraq war logs in the US State Department cables the US has a talking point saying that WikiLeaks put lives at risk but then when they're not in an interview or so on when they're actually in the courtroom and they have to speak under oath the US attorneys admit that they have no evidence of any person who has come to harm as a result of these publications sorry to interrupt you i suppose what i'm asking is do you find it troubling that the prime minister on the one hand says enough is enough but also maintains this view that potentially what he did could have been wrong do you find that troublesome in terms of the diplomatic side of things in advancing his case i think that the prime minister's position that what is being done to Julian keeping him imprisoned indefinitely in a high security prison is quite separate from whatever opinions he may have about WikiLeaks and i think that's a that that goes to very basic principles of of treating a person humanely of you know freedom from arbitrary detention and so on yeah thank you next question is joking statement from AAP hi thank you for your speech you mentioned how julien's continued incarceration is a legacy of the trump presidency there's an election coming up and a very real risk that we could see another second trump administration firstly how confident are you that julien will be released before then and if trump is reelected what in your view would be the consequences for julien we are in a position to assess when when doing will be released it's an ongoing we continue to call for his release what the u.s. government does with that is entirely out of our hands we don't know what the timing of it will be and we're pressing for it to happen as soon as possible what would happen once president if if we see another trump administration i think is concerning for all of the news media and not just julien assigned given that this is a prosecution that was opened by the trump administration which called and a president who called the media the enemy of the people so for those who are concerned about press freedom we share those concerns and we share concerns of what might happen under another trump administration and our last question today andrew tillett for the strength and action would be uh yes thank you tim andrew tillett from the fin and also vice president here at the club thank you both for appearing still i think that was one of the most powerful speeches we've had at the club for quite some time now in our history um i'd like to play maybe a little bit devil's advocate here perhaps but we saw with the situation about when david hicks where the public outcry over that case and his ongoing incarceration resulted in essentially a political a political deal you've talked about there the need for a political settlement in julien's case i wonder if you're um open to sort of a plea deal or some sort of um involvement in terms of a political negotiation yourselves with the uh with the prosecution over this you know julien pleads guilty to some sort of charge but is free with time served or something like that is that something on the table set something that um you have had maybe back channel discussions with the americans over well still i think jan should take jan i think the comparison with david hicks case is a good one uh that is a case in which an australian was in guantanamo bay and i have the howard government negotiated his return to australia and i want to pay tribute to steven kenny who is our australian my australian hope council we are we are considering all options now the difficulty is our primary position is of course that the case ought to be dropped there are we say that no crime has been committed and the facts the facts involved in the case don't disclose a crime so what is it that julien would be pleading to um this is a case of massive first amendment concern and i think the primary position must be that he is released and can return home to australia is he still in this is for julien this is a life and and death situation julien has to be free and that is the primary priority thank you so much for traveling from london your first trip to australia your first address at the national press club and let's hope the next time you return you return with your husband julien has signed for his first press club address and jennifer robinson thank you so much we're gifting you both membership and this will get you into the car park with julien