Even in defeat, Assange's campaign can win

Opinion
The WikiLeaks founder's Senate bid is a long shot, but there is method in his move.

Perhaps Assange is paranoid? Wouldn't you be?' Photo: AP

Julian Assange is accused of many things, but few argue he lacks chutzpah. His decision to stand for the Senate in September's election seems ludicrous effrontery. The WikiLeaks founder is asking Victorians to vote for him when he will be unable to campaign here because he is confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted political asylum after losing court challenges to prevent him being sent to Sweden to answer questions about sexual assault allegations.

He fears Sweden would extradite him to the US, where he could face decades in jail for publishing hundreds of thousands of leaked government and military documents. Even writing that seems unreal. The Assange story is now fantastical, almost unbelievable. The 41-year-old Australian, holed up in the embassy since June, spends his time trying to hang on to a semblance of his own version of his life as everyone else - journalists, politicians, lawyers, current and former friends, filmmakers - construct their own.

Assange's supporters insist his Senate tilt is more than a stunt to pressure politicians to engage with his plight - it is a genuine campaign with a slim chance of success. The first hurdle has been jumped - the Australian Electoral Commission has accepted Assange's enrolment to vote because he last lived in Australia in June 2010, within the three-year time limit. If he is eligible to vote, he can stand for election.

The WikiLeaks Party, as yet unregistered, has a national council of 10, a constitution and an experienced campaign director in barrister and former Liberal Party staffer Greg Barns. The most likely scenario in the Victorian Senate contest is that the Coalition will win three seats, Labor two, with the sixth to be decided by preferences between various parties, including the Greens, Bob Katter's new party and WikiLeaks.

Advertisement

Preference flows would have to fall Assange's way but, in the Senate, anything can happen - just ask John Madigan from the all-but-defunct DLP, who slipped through in 2010 with 2.3 per cent of first-preference votes.

There are many more hurdles. University of Sydney constitutional professor Anne Twomey says the commission's decision to allow Assange to enrol could be challenged if Assange was visiting his mother in Mentone in 2010, rather than actually living with her.

''If this were the case and he was elected and his election was successfully challenged, it would mean his election was void and that his party had no right to nominate a successor,'' says Twomey. The person with the next-highest number of votes would be elected.

There could also be a constitutional challenge on the grounds Assange has been granted asylum in Ecuador. A person is ineligible to be a candidate if they are ''under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power''.

It is improbable that Assange could make it to Australia to be sworn in even if he was elected. The party could then choose a replacement - Assange's as-yet-unnamed running mate.

It all seems as improbable as a Townsville-born cyberpunk with sporadic formal education dreaming up a secretive, international organisation to anonymously receive whistleblower leaks online.

The leaks to WikiLeaks in 2010 were the biggest in history. Many were deeply embarrassing to the US, including the ''Collateral Murder'' video from 2007 showing a US helicopter attack that killed Iraqi civilians and two Reuters staff. The 250,000 pages of US diplomatic cables offered a glimpse into a vast array of global events, from actions in the Middle East to efforts to control nuclear proliferation to the lead-up to the Iraq war.

WikiLeaks still operates but it is weakened financially because the US has all but stopped the flow of money to the organisation.

The attacks on its founder have also had an impact. A UK blogger wrote recently that once-fawning commentators, who compared Assange to ''Jesus, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Jason Bourne'' (I kid you not), now mocked him as a paranoid narcissist who thought himself ''above the law''. Perhaps Assange is paranoid. Wouldn't you be? The US was outraged by the leaks and has targeted the outsider WikiLeaks in a way that it has not repeated with mainstream media organisations that just this week published more WikiLeaks documents. US Vice-President Joe Biden has called Assange a ''high-tech terrorist'' and senior officials have labelled him a criminal deserving prosecution for espionage. There have been consistent reports of a grand jury in Virginia investigating what crimes WikiLeaks and Assange may have committed.

All this may mean nothing. There is a fair chance the US was bluffing and has failed to find anything with which to charge Assange. But paranoia might seem understandable, at least without assurances that the US will not seek extradition. And that is when Assange's Senate campaign starts to make sense.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr in February said it was ''sheer fantasy'' for WikiLeaks to claim that extradition to Sweden would mean a quick transfer to the US, because extradition could have just as easily been sought from Britain.

He might be right - although it is disputed - but if so, could Carr ask the US whether it intends seeking the extradition of an Australian citizen? If Carr has done so, could he let us know the answer? In the spirit of WikiLeaks, why should that be secret? The government has avoided the question again and again. Assange says he will go to Sweden if he has that assurance.

It is a long shot for Assange to become a Victorian senator, but if his campaign pressures the government to cease pretending this is just another case of an Aussie in a spot of bother overseas, it will be a victory, of sorts.

Gay Alcorn is a former editor of The Sunday Age and a regular columnist. Twitter: @gay_alcorn