 Thank you, Julian Hill, for coming to The Hill. Can you answer a few questions about Julian Assange? The first question that I would have for you is in relation to the letter sent by doctors for Assange, which is a group of over 300 doctors now, to the UK Home Secretary, Preeti Patel, pointing out that we have a problem now with the US Assurances. They were made, the doctors say, in relation to a prior health condition, which was mental health. And since then, on the 27th of October, he had a minor stroke. And the doctors are all saying that this is more often than not a sign that a major one is on the way. This has never been discussed in the courts. And even though it happened when he was attending his appeal, he was in Belmont Prison. But I'm pretty sure they had view on him. And Mary Costa-Caitis and I saw him. All of the journalists had view on him. So this is a real problem because one of the expert witnesses, Yancey Ellis, said that in the William G. Truesdale Alexandria Adult Attention Center, or ADC, where Ellis said Julian will most likely go, there are no doctors and no real medical facility while one of the doctors for a science former surgeon, Dr. Arthur Chesterfield, even said that if he has a major stroke, he will need, and Jill Stein backed that up, also a general practitioner, that he will need emergency room treatment for a very dangerous and delicate procedure within three hours. Now, Julian is locked up for 22 hours a day in isolation. And he has this stroke. He may not even have a chance of being discovered. And according to Dr. Arthur Chesterfield Evans, after four and a half hours, it's really not worth it. There would be no chance of recovery. What are we going to do about this situation, Julian? Look, thanks, Kathy. And I wanna thank everyone who continues to speak up for Julian Assange and defend the principles that we're fighting for. In particular, speaking up for press freedom and pushing back on what this is a blatant attempt to do, which is to chill the free press. I also wanna acknowledge the many community activists, community leaders, and community organisations that continue to put in effort around Australia, but in other Western democracies. And the efforts of the 300 doctors, I received that material some weeks ago and have forwarded it on within the government. It is deeply concerning. And I, like many Australians, were appalled at the British court's decision to approve extradition overturning the initial decision and deeply disappointed, though sadly not surprised by pretty but tell the UK Home Secretary's approval of the extradition. Extradition is always in democratic systems, a political judgment to make ultimately. And extradition in my view, a principled view, should not be approved for what are inherently political crimes. They're matters of principle, which I've stated before. Now, I understand the reasons from speaking to his legal team, why Julian has to date rejected consular assistance from the Australian government. It may be time that that position is reconsidered because it is frankly very difficult for the government of Australia to get involved in these issues and try and seek assurances and push for assurances around health issues when consular assistance has been rejected. I'm not meaning that to be an inflammatory comment, it's just a statement of fact. And I do understand why to date that consular assistance has not been taken up and why there hasn't been trust in that process. But the medical evidence is deeply worrying about his current health conditions and it would be appropriate for the government should we be allowed to do so under the consular assistance banner to get involved and seek greater assurances around the conditions in which he's currently being kept and any future conditions around medical treatment. That's what I'd like to see. Sorry, to be clear, what I would like to see is the prosecution dropped, extradition not approved and the matter brought to a close. And the Australian government has been clear before and since the election that the case is dragged on for long enough and that the matter should be brought to a close. They were words enough is enough that the now Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese have used before the election and we continue, so I'm assured, to express the government's view to the UK and the US about our position. Thank you, Julian Hill. My second question concerns an article in Declassified Australia by the lawyer Kelly Tranto who submitted freedom of information request to the Attorney General Department and she received documents regarding a prisoner transfer protocol. There was a lot of stuff that was redacted in what she was handed back and that was in relation to key risks and mitigations. What we could see there really principally concerned what happens after Julian is extradited, goes through perhaps 10 years of the appeals process and finally, we don't want this to happen but if he gets convicted then there is some kind of loose agreement that he would be allowed to apply to serve a sentence in Australia where America would dictate how long he is imprisoned here. Now, we are very concerned about what's hidden behind this black rectangle of redaction. The question that Kelly Tranto poses is she would hope that one of the key risks is suicide in fact, that's the one that she draws attention to. She also puts in a quotation from Professor Koppelman who was one of the expert witnesses for the defense. He's a world renowned psychiatrist and so was another one, Professor Quentin Dealey. However, there were two other expert witnesses on the prosecution side and all four were in agreement that Assange presented a moderate to high risk of suicide not in the US, but in the UK. What was stated in the quotation from Koppelman and this is something that I've been aware of because, and Mary Costa-Caitis as well because we have been in the courtroom for the last two years. We remember very clearly this being said and this troubling me for some time that once Julian's extradition became imminent, he would find a way to complete his suicide and this view was accepted by the magistrate, Vanessa Boraita from the lower court. Now, the problem is, and Kelly Tranter points out that because these assurances are about conditions in the United States, they are immaterial if he's going to commit suicide in the UK if he never makes it out of there. So what can we do about this? Oh, sorry, I'd just like to add something to that. There is an application to the Office of the Information Commissioner to have the redacted material released. Now, one reason that I think that that should be approved is that how can we have a guarantee given the complexity of this case, its duration, the avalanche of misinformation that has surrounded Julian and the case for the last 10 years? How can we be confident? We as journalists who are pretty well expert in the case now, how can we be confident that our diplomats have been well or accurately informed about this? Shouldn't the Office of the Information Commissioner say yes to scrutiny, even if it's by a limited number of people who are given clearance for that purpose? Just to make sure, just to do the fact-checking, that's all. The reports regarding Julian's health and the concerns, professional concerns by multiple psychiatrists now regarding his welfare and potential suicide, suicidal ideation, or indeed actions, are gravely concerning. They're concerning, I think, to any decent human being and caring Australian and also no concern within the government. To be clear again, I don't want to see him extradited. I don't want to see this prosecution dropped and the Australian government wants to see this matter brought to a close. That's our firm position. As I noted earlier, there's limits to the extent to which we can engage in detail on his behalf in relation to health and consular concerns, given his refused consular assistance. And I understand the reasons for that. And there are limits at this stage, in a legal sense, because Australia and the Australian government are not parties to the case. That's just a fact. It's not an avoidance of responsibility statement. I'm not trying to avoid the question, but it's also a fact that the Australian government is not a party to the case. And that ultimately, we can make representations as we have, but we cannot force or stop the extradition or the prosecution. And that goes to diplomatic efforts and so on. With regard to those documents, I had a look at them. I thought that much to the article and analysing the context was very robust. I thought some of the framing was probably a little bit over the top. And it's entirely normal. The documents are released according to the FLI laws. My overriding concern is that those decisions are made according to the law and are made properly and quickly. And don't drag on for months or years as we've seen too often with the former government. Yeah, could you be a little bit more specific about what bring this matter to a close actually means? There's multiple ways, maybe I'll reference some of the media reporting that I've seen, which I think is well covered. And as I've said, I would like to see the UK decline the extradition and not agree to extradite him. And I would like to see the US drop the prosecution. There's multiple ways in which that could happen. And as I said, this is an unfortunately realist observation and it's not a new observation. There are observations that are made in speeches before the election in media interviews and in our private discussions within the parliament. I think this is recognised Australia is not a party to the case and ultimately we cannot force the UK or the US to cease the trajectory that they're on. We can try, but we can't force it. They're just facts. Now I understand and I've seen the community commentary that would like the Prime Minister to speak more publicly about the contents of his private conversations and efforts. I've seen many people would like us all to scream from the rooftops. I think it's entirely appropriate that people are gathering outside the parliament, that around the country we continue to see week after week people coming, taking to the streets, standing outside government buildings, speaking up in the press in favour of Assange. I really do. I also think it's appropriate, given we know the Prime Minister's position on this issue has been clear internally and externally. I also think it's appropriate and I trust his judgment about the best way to prosecute these things and his judgment at the moment is that quiet diplomacy, making clear our position to partners and allies around the world and other governments is the most likely way to achieve a result. Now, I won't put words in the Prime Minister's mouth. I want to be really clear that's not what I'm doing, but I have seen a number of media reports in recent weeks which I think had a lot to offer in terms of insight into the difficulties and the barriers, particularly within the US system. I think you've made the point, Cathy, quite rightly that this is a political case. It's a political decision to extradite and we've conveyed our view to the UK government regarding that. And it's also a political decision in the US and I think highly politically charged matter. There was some sensible, I think, media commentary over the last few weeks identifying difficulties or barriers or roadblocks that make this case particularly tricky to resolve within the US in the short term. One is President Biden's stated priority on leaving the Justice Department to be independent. And so there's a very high threshold, if you like, for him to intervene, given his public statements on many other matters, for him to just direct the Justice Department to drop a prosecution. Again, that's a fact which has been reported by pretty credible analysts and I think we should give it weight and understand that given the political rhetoric that President Biden has put around not behaving like President Trump and making political interventions and prosecutions, that's a difficulty which needs to be resolved. And I think the Australian government's judgment is probably right from what I can see from the outside that difficulty or delicacy may not be aided by loud, screechy diplomacy. The other observation that's been made again by I think it was Joe Hockey as the former ambassador and a number of sort of Washington literate people far more than you and I, Kathy, is the timing is always an issue with these things and that the midterm elections are coming up. There's very strongly held views about Julian down on Capitol Hill. And those much wiser and closer than you and I have observed that the timing question would also be delicate before the midterms. And the third observation I'd make and I'm someone who's made the point repeatedly that Chelsea Manning, the person who leaked the classified documents was pardoned, had his sentence commuted, whereas Assange has now been incarcerated for longer. I would observe also, as the media have said, that her sentence was commuted after a legal process and a guilty prosecution and that's a view which some parts of the US establishment we've seen in public reports and dispatchers in the media have been raising as well. So I think those issues give you a sense of some of the barriers. And again, I just need to be clear. I'm not party to the discussions. I'm not a member of the cabinet. I'm a backbencher with a set of principle views. But I think that some of the media reporting there has pointed to some of the difficulties and probably starts to make sense of why the prime minister's taken the view that this is best prosecuted in the way he's doing so to leave the American system maximum room to move and to close in answer to your question. Therefore, there's a number of ways that this matter could be brought to a close, Cathy, but they're not within our control. Yeah, well, timing is pretty sensitive. It's been a decade and we were just quite worried that he may not last for that much longer. He's very frail. And there's another upsurge of more dangerous COVID in the UK. It's horribly concerning. The media reports, the health reports, the assessment by the doctors is horribly concerning and underscores the urgency of bringing this matter to a close and releasing him from incarceration in those conditions. That's what I want to hear, that that's how we bring it to a close. That's my view, Cathy, very clearly. I get it, Julianne, you're probably the person who's the most well-informed about Julianne's case. Maybe I've used a lot of words there. I'll just sort of sum it up in simple terms. Many of us feel so strongly about this issue in civil society and in the parliament and certainly the Labor caucus. And resolving it is not fully within our power. That's just the fact of life. I wish it were. I wish it were. And those barriers, which I've tried to point to in a sort of a measured, thoughtful way, because I've been giving this a lot of thought with others working on the campaign, what are the barriers? What could we do as a global community, people working in other countries who had discussions with people from the UK and elsewhere? What could we do to try and resolve some of those questions? And people who've thought about this deeply have observed there are real barriers in the Justice Department intervention issue, in the issue about pardons versus commutes versus dropping sentences. And, of course, with the timing of the midterms. This is all caught up in the US political system. I wish it were otherwise. So sometimes these things become a question of approach and timing. I was just wondering, have you seen what's behind those rectangles of redaction? Have you any knowledge of what's been said? Just because I wondered if one of the key risks with Julian is that he would go back to work and start revealing things again. As you've heard me say before and answered the questions like that, Kathy, I'm not doing hypotheticals and I'm not going to speculate. I have no knowledge. No, you haven't seen it. OK. Can I just make one other point from a former life as a public servant that from the outside there's often conspiracy theory or innocence or stuff up. And I've found in life you're always better to back innocence or stuff up because conspiracy theory is very, very rare. I do have it. I'll put this on the record. I do have great faith in all of my dealings over many years now with the professionalism of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the insight and intelligence that they bring to their task. And I mean that in the broadest sense of intelligence in every sense. So I've got no reason to doubt that the advice they're giving is the best that they can possibly give. Well, based on the information that they've been given and that's one of my concerns that they may have been misled. We don't know and we can't know unless the Office of Information Commissioner will agree to let at least some people see and fact track what's in there. Can I just move to the US now? So there's almost a ray of sunshine here. There have been some proposed changes to the Espionage Act by squad members Rashida Talib and Elan Omar. And these changes limit who the Espionage Act applies to. It's basically government employees who have signed a contract or a note that they are not allowed to tell certain information is secret and they engage legally to keep it a secret. But not journalists. So this is one of the changes. And there is another clause that reason to believe is change to you must have specific intent to harm national security. And the most interesting one I find is that information must have been properly classified. Now under Obama's executive order of 2009, it's executive order 13526 section 1.7, it is illegal to classify anything that conceals violations of law, inefficiency or administrative error or which just simply prevents embarrassment to a person or organization or agency or even to prevent the release of information needlessly in a so-called interest of national security. In accordance with this law, Talib proposes an affirmative public interest defense for the purpose of disclosing misdeeds to the public. The Espionage Act is currently a matter of strict liability, but we can't assume that everyone behind closed doors is innocent or simply incompetent. Now, my goodness, there's only two of them so far, unless there's a few more that have joined. But that last one about information being properly classified, there is a problem of over-classification. Two, in fact, one that there is far too much that is classified. And the other one is that WikiLeaks actually did pick the things that that's what they published, stuff that was mainly illegally classified. What do you think about this? And how can we actually promote the idea? I know it's an American question, but would the Australian government make representations that they straighten out their Espionage Act to stop charging journalists because journalists would not be charged under these new amendments? Yeah, I'm no expert on the US Espionage or legal framework. And I think you implicitly acknowledge there the Australian lawmaking system, intelligence architecture and legislative architecture and indeed the laws themselves are fundamentally different from the US system. They're a presidential system with two co-branches of government hence a lot of the legislative architectures just fundamentally different because it also goes to the relationship between Congress and the administration. So I don't think I'm in a position to comment on in any great detail and it would be highly unusual for the Australian government to be advocating specific legal changes one way or the other or getting involved in the legislative system of another country. Are we going that way too though in being too draconian about what people are entitled to know? Well, I think as I said before, there's a freedom of information regime in Australia which Labor put in place. We've been very critical in opposition regarding the resourcing in particular and the time taken to make those decisions and I'd hope to see that we can make prompt to fairer decisions. There will always be things this should not be a radical statement particularly in the security area that we're living through threats of terrorism and so on and not fantasies of the intelligence agency sadly as we've seen so often in the world. They're real, there will always be things that cannot be revealed publicly. There will always be a need for some government secrets. The question of course is where you draw that line and making sure that things are done according to the law that applies. So I think that our commitment to making the FOI ratio work as important as is strong and ongoing oversight of the intelligence agencies and the security sector. In that regard, Australia's intelligence, the IJAS, the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security is a critical institution with the powers of a standing Royal Commission to oversight those agencies. And to date, I think the appointments to that position have been exemplary as is the commitment to the independent national security legislation monitor which again is something that the former government questioned and then we're moves to try and wind back or use at that office and that we're committed to. You can see in our national platform and the bills in previous parliaments introduced by Penny Wong and others of a commitment to robust oversight of the intelligence agencies and that'll continue. Thank you very much, Gillian Hill.