CANBERRA, Australia (LifeSiteNews) — Julian Assange is Australia’s most well-known person and his release from Britain’s Belmarsh high security prison has been an intensely covered media story around the world. The reaction in Australia has been somewhat different to elsewhere, revealing how ignorant most of the population is about international affairs and how eager to please the United States the political leadership is.
In virtually all of the Australian media coverage there has been hardly a word of criticism of the savage treatment of Assange by the U.S. and U.K. He was holed up first in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years, then held in solitary confinement for five years in a Belmarsh cell two meters by three meters. The U.N. Special Rapporteur described it as torture.
The coverage his return to Australia was sentimental, highlighting the reuniting of Assange with his wife Stella and two small children, who, the reporters gushed, had seen their father only behind bars.
There were references to the espionage charge he had pleaded guilty to. One reporter covering the touchdown of the aircraft started issuing grave warnings about how Assange had better be careful in the future, having been guilty of such a serious offence. There was a sycophantic interview by that same journalist on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News with a former CIA chief of staff to express pleasure that he was convicted and regret that he did not serve more jail time in the U.S.
The line pushed by the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was that Assange’s incarceration had “gone on long enough.” No journalist asked what he meant by that, so here is a translation: “We don’t want to explicitly criticize the United States or Britain, so we will make vague references to how long Julian Assange was punished in order to make us look like caring leaders willing to help our own citizens and leave the actual reason for his imprisonment unexamined.” The “it’s gone on too long” mantra had bipartisan support.
In truth, the Australian government had been extremely slow to do anything to defend its citizen which amounted to a betrayal. It was not until Albanese became prime minister that there were more serious efforts to help Assange, who was being prosecuted as if he were an American citizen, when he had only been in that country for about three days in his life.
READ: Julian Assange released from prison after agreeing to plea deal with US government
There were some local politicians who have had a clearer sense of the political and moral outrage, although they tended to be fringe players. The Tasmanian member of the lower house, Andrew Wilkie, had long campaigned for Assange’s release and is now pointing out that the potential precedent of his conviction is a dangerous one for all journalists. Wilkie noted that previous Australian governments were “hostile” to Assange, but that this Labor government had finally done something.
The hostility towards him in the political class Is still there. The shadow minister for Veterans Affairs and former leader of the Nationals, Barnaby Joyce, indicated he did not like Assange, but said he believed what he did was not illegal and his prosecution was extra-territorial overreach, setting a dangerous precedent.
What is completely lacking in the Australia media and political class is an understanding of why Assange and WikiLeaks has been so important, and why the U.S. went after him so aggressively in what was a violation of America’s First Amendment’s protection of free speech and a free press. It was a double absurdity. Assange was attacked by U.S. legal authorities despite not living in, or visiting, the country and not being an American citizen. And the charges undermined America’s own laws.
To some extent Australia’s ignorance is understandable because the country has only weak protection of free speech and, under the former right wing Howard government, brought in draconian laws that have since been modified but can effectively criminalize the publication of classified material. Called the Core Espionage Offence, it might theoretically have been used against Assange had he been dealing with Australian material, although there is notionally some protection for journalists.
What is very unlikely to be understood in Australia is the scale of Assange’s achievement. He was better than a journalist and better than a publisher. Every journalist makes mistakes, and every publisher in the history of media has been biased and overseen errors, typically with little remorse or admission of culpability.
But Assange always published the truth. It was the reason he was so hated. His contribution was to provide unimpeachable primary source material, which investigative journalists around the world continue to find invaluable. In an environment where the publishing of lies and falsehoods in mainstream media has saturated the public sphere, Assange did the opposite.
In Australia there is a widespread sense of relief that the saga, which “went on too long” is over. People can get back to ignoring international activity. The full recognition of how Assange and WikiLeaks changed world media will have to come from overseas.