When he was first arrested I bought the lie that he was a danger to our national security, that he was reckless and irresponsible, that he was a traitor…

Boy have I changed since then!

I now consider Julian Assange, for all his imperfections and issues, to be the central character in one of the most important fights of our generation.

The fact is he committed no crime.

Fact.

I’ll say it again. He. Committed. No. Crime.

Even more, even if it WAS a crime, what he did wasn’t WRONG.

After all, Good People Break Bad Laws.

What he did was very embarrassing for the US government because what he published exposed war crimes, torture, and the misuse of taxpayer funds. But the publishing of what was leaked to him was NOT a crime.

Publishing the TRUTH, no matter how embarrassing, is not a crime.

Nor should it be.

I was wrong. Very very wrong. And I’m sorry.

Julian Assange should not be on trial. He should not be in prison. And he should not be being extradited to the US where he’s likely to face a prejudiced and unjust system that is determined to lock him away till he dies.

The fact that he could not take refuge in his home country of Australia is an indictment against us, not him.

The fact that he sought refuge in the embassy of a foreign power and not his home country, tells us a great deal about how we fail, and have failed, to uphold basic human rights.

The fact that even now there is no real expectation that Australia will stand up for him, for freedom of speech, or for journalism and whistleblowers, is OUR shame, and not his.

The fact that 12 years ago I was on the wrong side of this issue is to my shame.

I know that many of you on my page would have agreed with me 12 years ago…

I hope that you too have grown and changed and can now see that Julian Assange was (for all his issues) actually the good guy here… or as close to a good guy as we can hope for in the real world, and that the full weight of a global super-power has been brought to bear against him, not because he is evil or bad, but because he exposed how evil and bad that super-power had become.

Whistleblowers are the most vitally important people that we have in this age of all-mighty government, and people willing to publish the secrets that whistleblowers provide are doing us a favour… even if what is published is ugly, embarrassing, awful.

ESPECIALLY if what they publish is ugly, embarrassing, awful.

We have a right to know what is being done in our name, with our money, supposedly for our ‘freedom’.

Julian Assange did us a favour. Did ME a favour. And in return I hated him and joined in the pile-on that branded him a traitor.

I can’t undo what I said 12 years ago, but I can acknowledge my fault, and I can challenge you… if you still consider him a traitor, would you take another look? Would you reconsider in light of all that has happened in the 12 years since, and ask yourself whether perhaps the whistleblower is NOT your enemy… but maybe the corrupt and violent government is?

That maybe the super-power that seeks to destroy him, and the Australian government which stays silent, are actually more to be feared than the one who risked everything to expose them…?

Julian Assange is a deeply imperfect hero. Which, if we’re honest, is the only kind of hero that has ever existed.

What if your life were examined in forensic detail in the global press, with every single person willing to say a bad thing about you (true or false) given air time? How would you look after that?

Similar to Julian, I suspect.

I know that I wouldn’t come off smelling of roses after such treatment. And neither would you.

So despite all the imperfections and issues and questions which have been aired in global media, I ask you a simple question which I have asked myself: Was he wrong to publish the details of torture, war crimes, and the secret acts of super-powers?

No. He was not wrong. And I would go so far as to say that he was the hero we needed, even if not the hero we thought we deserved.

We think that we deserve a perfect hero, someone unimpeachable, someone of whom not a bad word can be said. Let’s get real. We don’t deserve any kind of hero at all, not even an imperfect one.

And frankly we don’t even deserve a Julian Assange.

I was wrong. And I know that I was not the only one. I cannot change what I thought and what I said back then, but let me say it loud and clear now: Julian Assange should be free. Julian Assange should be celebrated for his courage. Julian Assange should be defended by our government and brought home to Australia to live free and in peace for the rest of his days as a man who did more than almost any other single person to bring accountability to a super-power who thought they were a law unto themselves.

Sadly successive governments in Australia have simply ignored him, and now thanks to their inaction it seems that the US government have finally gotten what they wanted:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/17/uk/uk-julian-assange-extradition-priti-patel-intl-gbr