At Tuesday’s Council meeting Councillor Adam Guise proposed a motion that Council writes to the Federal Government, Prime Minister and relevant Ministers denouncing the extradition of Julian Assange from the UK and urging the Prime Minister to make a public statement denouncing the extradition.
Cr Guise said that Julian Assange has been imprisoned since 2010. ‘He is facing a life sentence in the USA for exposing war crimes.
‘His extradition and potential sentence is a grave threat to public interest journalism and incompatible with the human rights that Australians hold.
‘The power of a public statement from Julian Assange’s home country cannot be understated.’
Where’s the mandate?
Cr Andrew Gordon wanted to speak against this motion. ‘Seriously, like where’s the mandate to do this, like, you know, it’s okay to say “everyone thinks that Mr Assange should be freed” and all those sorts of ideas – I’m not sure that’s the case.
‘Any allegation [levelled] against Julian Assange is simply just an allegation. He hasn’t had his day in court.
‘You know, I agree that the law, as Councillor Guise said, needs to be upheld. He needs to have his day.
He made choices
‘He made choices – free choices of his own free will. He done certain things. He’s being held accountable for those things.
‘I don’t know if he’s spent every day in jail since 2010. I think he has been living in embassies and probably not quite jail-like, but living in embassies nonetheless.
‘I imagine if you went down to the pub and said to the guys, if you went to Casino Street, if you went down the Union Street and started talking to the people that don’t have a house anymore, they’d say to you: “Why are you talking about Julian Assange?”
Cr Gordon this was a jurisdiction for which we have no control. ‘We write a letter, I can imagine they get the letter and say: “Oh, look we’ve made a terrible mistake. This was written to us and said he should come home”.
It’s going to go straight in the round filing cabinet [the bin].
‘Here we are debating this, spending time, when we should be looking at those people that are dispossessed and displaced and struggling and all this sort of stuff. And here we are talking about Julian and his choices, the choices he’s made.
We sent a murderer home
‘I remember the last time that Lismore got involved with a matter of the law and it appears right now that we sent the alleged murderer home. We did, we bought a ticket!
‘I think we should leave it to the people who know what they’re doing. And let’s get back to the business of sorting out Lismore and making this place a better place for everyone.’
Definitely a local matter
Cr Ekins said that you could tell by the passion in the room that it is definitely a local matter of local interest. ‘Obviously we know that Julian Assange lived in this community and his father visited last year – to quite a significant gathering of people – and spoke about this very matter and its importance. The media within it was covered widely in the local press.
‘Council, in the past, has written to the government on two occasions on this matter. Take that as a reference from Lismore. I think it is a local matter of quite a lot of interest to local people and it’s worthy of debate in this chamber and thank you, Councillor Guise, for raising it, yet again.
Protect our freedom of speech
Cr Guise said he was asking the federal government to protect Julian Assange and to protect our freedom of speech. ‘To actually say – to the United States government: “leave this alone” – to the UK Government: “don’t extradite him”, and allow this person to come home to Australia, his own home country.
‘Julian Assange has been in prison since 2010! That’s 12 years in incarceration. He’s facing a life sentence in the USA for exposing war crimes. It’s a grave, grave threat to public interest journalism, and it’s incompatible with human rights if we can allow this to continue.
‘The power of our federal government, the power of us making a public statement cannot be underestimated. ‘He was imprisoned for speaking truth to power, by exposing US military wrongdoing and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – two failed wars, we are seeing a result of now.
‘The news outlets that shared this information that he enabled, aren’t being prosecuted, but Julian Assange is being made scapegoat. His enabling the publishing of this information is in the public interest and press freedom and we should be supporting that.
Assange is an Australian citizen
‘He’s an Australian citizen and we need to protect his interests and the rights to be given freedom and essentially asylum to his country, home country – Australia.
‘So we should not be extradited him to the USA. We shouldn’t be allowing the UK Government which itself is in turmoil, and about to change and dictate this person’s life. He has a young family, he has kids, and he should be allowed to return to them. And their futures together.
‘It’s an overwhelming issue in our community. It’s one our community strongly feels about. It’s one that our federal government needs to hear loud and clear. So please support me in this endeavour.’
The motion was put to a vote: Councillors Bird, Ekins and Guise were for and Councillors Gordon, Jensen, Bing, Rob and Krieg were opposed and the motion was defeated.
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