News is breaking that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has struck a plea deal to avoid extradition and prison in the United States. The details of the agreement must be approved by a US federal court judge and are only just emerging. The deal reportedly includes a guilty plea, credit for time already served in jail, and permission for Assange to immediately return to Australia.
Reporters are beginning to fill in the gaps for Assange’s travel plans as he boards a plane. But worth noting here is what a remarkable about-face this represents by the United States. It also removes a persistent burr in relations with Australia.
Only a year ago this outcome didn’t seem at all likely.
“Mr Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared at a press conference in Brisbane following the annual AUSMIN talks in July last year.
This case always had a political dimension, and all sides will now claim vindication.
Blinken confirmed that the Australian side had raised the Assange case. Indeed, Anthony Albanese came to office in 2022 saying that it was about time this long-running saga was bought to a close. While Assange has been criticised by both sides of politics over the years since the release of Wikileaks cables and other documents in 2010, by last year Opposition leader Peter Dutton had also come around to agreeing “it’s gone on for too long”.
Blinken was having none of it.
“I understand the sensitivities, I understand the concerns and views of Australians,” he said. But in what amounted to the most direct public rebuttal of lobbying on the issue, Blinken made plain the American concern.
“I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter,” he said. “The actions that [Assange] is alleged to have committed risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries and put named human sources at grave risk, grave risk of physical harm, grave risk of detention.”
Blinken’s remarks left the strong impression that nothing would stop the push for an extradition to ensure Assange appeared in a US court, not even the influence of an ally.
This case always had a political dimension, and all sides will now claim vindication. The US administration will say that the Justice Department has made its independent decision, and that Assange has accepted culpability. The Assange camp will claim his plea bargain was the only way to escape an ongoing trauma. Assange, free to tell his story, will likely transform into an even more sought-after voice globally, a trenchant critic of US foreign policy and the ills of corporate media.
And the Australian government will say this resulted from quiet diplomacy.
Where this matters for Albanese is in managing a point of difference with the Americans. There will be no boasting, but the government now has a ready-made line to blunt criticism that Australia only ever sides with the United States.
