 One of humanity's great weaknesses has been its inability to remember, its inability to learn from its history, and that applies as much to Julian Assange and the Assange story as anything else. The circumstances shift, but the fundamentals remain the same, and for me the fundamentals are these. In 2010, WikiLeaks with Julian Assange as its editor published a massive number of secret documents about the US war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many of the revelations were deeply embarrassing to the United States and its allies, including Australia. They included the infamous video footage of a US Apache helicopter attack on civilians in a Baghdad street in July 2007, which was widely and sensationally reported around the world. The British Guardian newspaper reported it thus on April 6, 2010. A secret video showing US aircrew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then laughing at the dead after launching an airstrike that killed a dozen people, including two Iraqis working for Reuters news agency, was revealed by WikiLeaks today. The military whistleblower who leaked the documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley, now Chelsea Manning, was prosecuted and sent to jail for 35 years, although her sentence was commuted after seven years on clemency grounds by Barack Obama as his presidency was ending. Tellingly, there was no effort by the Obama administration to go after Julian Assange as the publisher of the devastating document dump, even though they had become obsessed about leaks and about punishing leakers. In this context, the 2011 decision by Australia's Walkley Foundation, which has been highlighting great Australian journalism through its celebrated awards for nearly 70 years, to award WikiLeaks with Assange as its editor, a Walkley award for its outstanding contribution to journalism, was highly significant. Walkley judges very deliberately spelled out that in their considered view, Julian Assange was acting as a journalist applying new technology to, quote, penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup. Walkley judges said, quote, while not without flaws, the Walkley trustees believed that by designing and constructing a means to encourage whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world. And in the process, they have triggered a robust debate inside and outside the media about official secrecy, the public's right to know and the future of journalism, the future of journalism. As the Washington Post reported on November 25, 2013, in relation to the Obama administration's reluctance to prosecute a case against Assange, quote, justice officials said they looked hard at Assange, but realized that they have what they described as, quote, a New York Times problem. If the Justice Department indicted Assange, it would also have to prosecute the New York Times and other news organizations and writers who published classified material, including the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper. So what changed? What changed was that Donald Trump arrived in the White House and his new CIA director, Mike Pompeo, who will shortly be lining up to attempt to be the next president of the United States. In April 2017, declared that WikiLeaks was a threat to US national security and that Julian Assange, quote, and his ilk, good word, ilk, seek personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values. Is it possible that the irony of that description escaped both Pompeo and his president? It does pose an interesting question, doesn't it? Who has done more to undermine American democracy? Julian Assange for revealing inconvenient truths hidden within an unhealthily secret world? Or Donald Trump? Simply by being Donald Trump. The bottom line is that Julian Assange has now spent just short of four years coexisting with Britain's toughest criminals in the high-security Belmarsh prison, still facing the prospect of then spending much of the rest of his life in an American military prison. Since the advent of the Albanese government, two things have happened here that are relevant to the case of Julian Assange. One was the Prime Minister's comments in and out of the parliament that he has personally raised the Assange case with, quote, representatives of the United States government, unquote, saying, quote, enough is enough. It is time for this matter to be brought to a conclusion, quote, and that, quote, you have to reach a point whereby what is the point of continuing this legal action which could be caught up now for many years into the future. But we don't know whether Prime Minister Albanese has spoken directly to President Biden. We don't know whether he's spoken to the US ambassador here or to what other officials he has spoken to. We don't know the strength of his intervention, if we can call it that. And we have no idea of what hope there might be for Julian Assange in the American response. All we know is that Anthony Albanese won't be pursuing megaphone diplomacy. In other words, whatever happens will be negotiated behind closed doors. That is a part of our modern democracy. The other event relevant to the Assange case and to whether this government is genuinely resolved to do the right thing by him, whether they like him or not, was the meeting last week called by Attorney General Mark Dreyfus with Australia's major media organisations to discuss press freedom. Ironically, also held behind closed doors, apart from some prepared opening remarks and the photo opportunities. Dreyfus said in his public remarks, quote, I think that journalists and I still contend that Julian Assange was acting as a journalist when those things happened that have led to him being in jail awaiting extradition to America. I think that journalists should never face the prospect of being charged just for doing their jobs. And there is agreement across the parliament and indeed the community that improved protections are overdue. The Albanese government intends to progress press freedom and protection of press freedom. Mark Dreyfus was referring to domestic threats to press freedom like the federal police raids on the ABC and the homes of a Melbourne Herald Sun journalist four years ago. But the sentiment he expressed should apply equally to Julian Assange. And the longer Julian Assange remains caught in the web of U.S. legal procedure and British procedure without demonstrable and effective intervention by the Australian government to bring him home, the more the Australian government's credibility will suffer. And if Australia's representations are made forcefully, albeit privately, but then rebuffed by the U.S., what will it say about the true nature of Australia's status in an alliance that has been preserved at the core of this country's entire foreign policy for generations? It is long past the time for Julian Assange to be freed and to come home. Thank you.