Speaker 1: Welcome to Law the Podcast time Lex Lazy, I'm Greg Barnes.
Speaker 1: Where we go again, Greg and being a retired judge.
Speaker 2: Congratulations Legs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks very much. It's very exciting.
Speaker 2: Actually, your whole world opens up.
Speaker 1: Lex. I've had that happen before and I went back
Speaker 1: to being a judge. But it won't happen again. Don't
Speaker 1: do it again. You've learned your lesson but three times,
Speaker 1: and now I'm retired. One thing I did want to
Speaker 1: touch on was some comments made by Justice Ian Jackman
Speaker 1: of the Federal Court in a speech he made back
Speaker 1: in June in relation to delays in the delivery of
Speaker 1: judgments by judges in the civil jurisdiction of that court.
Speaker 2: I think he is Hugh Jackman's brother.
Speaker 1: He is Hugh Jackman's brother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ian Jackman.
Speaker 1: So, just setting the scene, Federal Court does an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of civil work and a lot of public law
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it. Much of it requires
Speaker 1: reasonably lengthy hearings and even longer judgments. And what Justice
Speaker 1: Jackman noticed was that there are a lot of these
Speaker 1: judgments a long time to be delivered, periods of two
Speaker 1: and a half to three and a half years, and
Speaker 1: so in a speech recently, he identified seven cases where
Speaker 1: the particular judgment had taken at least two and a
Speaker 1: half years, And in the case of one judge, Justice
Speaker 1: Bernard Murphy, he put him in what he called the
Speaker 1: three and a half year club and made the point,
Speaker 1: which I think is a valid point to make, there
Speaker 1: is no federal judicial Commission, So the only way to
Speaker 1: make judges accountable is to make a public issue about
Speaker 1: delays in judgment. So what we're talking about is delays
Speaker 1: in the justice system. And there are parties in these
Speaker 1: cases who have to wait years to get an outcome.
Speaker 1: In one famous case, well one famous, one infamous case,
Speaker 1: perhaps one of the judges waited for two and a
Speaker 1: half years and then, as he put it, disappeared off
Speaker 1: into the sunset of retirement. Somebody else had to write it. Well,
Speaker 1: he was he was going, he was going to He
Speaker 1: was the one saddled with the job of writing the judgment.
Speaker 1: So what do you think about, looker. I watched his
Speaker 1: The extract from the speech, the.
Speaker 3: Egregious delays by some judges in delivering reserve judgments represent
Speaker 3: a real and growing threat to the rule of law
Speaker 3: in Australia. Delays of nine months or more are relatively
Speaker 3: common in some courts, including my own, and a significant
Speaker 3: number of judgments of the Federal Court are reserved for
Speaker 3: about two and a half years or more.
Speaker 2: I think it was on the Australian website and they
Speaker 2: flashed up the photographs of the judges, and I mean
Speaker 2: two minds about it, you know, I mean, I get
Speaker 2: the point he's making, and it's a very important point
Speaker 2: that justice delayed is justice denied for people. And you know, litigation,
Speaker 2: you know, we know, but I don't think most people
Speaker 2: know just how stressful it is unless you get involved.
Speaker 2: And it's expensive. Now you might say, oh, well it's corporations,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. Well it does because they've got contingencies
Speaker 2: relying on the result, etc. The question is would you
Speaker 2: go and do what he did, which was essentially a
Speaker 2: name and shame. I'm in two minds about it. I mean,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, I think, you know, maybe not.
Speaker 2: But now on the other hand, Richard Ackland, our friend
Speaker 2: who is a great journalist and used to run Media
Speaker 2: Watch for the ABC for a while, Justinian his great
Speaker 2: legal gossip website, he wouldn't like to gossip, but it
Speaker 2: is a gossip website. But he keeps track of these judgments.
Speaker 2: He's been doing it for years.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: In fact, I was just thinking the other day about
Speaker 2: a case. I did, a migration case. The two and
Speaker 2: a half years to get a judgment, but when we
Speaker 2: won it, I was so happy we won it. I'd
Speaker 2: actually forgotten that it was two and a half years
Speaker 2: we've been waiting. So look, I mean, there's really no
Speaker 2: excuse for it.
Speaker 1: When I went to the Supreme Court, I'd been there
Speaker 1: a year or so, I think, and I had also
Speaker 1: forgotten this particular case, which was a criminal appeal. I
Speaker 1: just had completely forgotten it. But the judgment had disappeared
Speaker 1: into the earth somehow. And then got a notification that
Speaker 1: the court was delivering judge. But it was quite surreal
Speaker 1: that here was the Court of Appeal delivering a judgment
Speaker 1: in which I've been counseled and now I'm a judge. Well,
Speaker 1: and that was twelve or eighteen months. Might have been
Speaker 1: a bit longer, yeah, I mean. He argued in his
Speaker 1: speech that these sort of delays are a breach of
Speaker 1: the rule of law, and it's hard to it's really
Speaker 1: hard to argue with that. And the other point is
Speaker 1: you can't blame the lawyers. I mean, judges are paid
Speaker 1: handsomely to do their work and everyone knows judgment writing
Speaker 1: is a challenge. They get writers blocked. There are times
Speaker 1: when you just can't bring yourself to do it because
Speaker 1: you just can't make the brain work. But it's got
Speaker 1: to be dealt with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny about a judgments. I mean, most of
Speaker 2: our listeners and most people don't read judgments very wisely.
Speaker 2: But I think one of the issues about judgments some
Speaker 2: of them are very long legs. Yes, really long.
Speaker 1: We have been inundated with paper over the last twenty
Speaker 1: years or yeah, I mean that's what they said about
Speaker 1: the court of appeal when Victoria had a Court of
Speaker 1: Appeal introduced in the nineteen nineties. I think it was
Speaker 1: all that was going to do was at a level
Speaker 1: of complexity that was beyond comprehension to the original or
Speaker 1: the old process of full courts. And I think that's happened.
Speaker 1: There is a mountain. So for our listeners.
Speaker 2: Most jurisdictions around Australia have a separate well not all
Speaker 2: of the bigger jurisdictions have a separate court which is
Speaker 2: called the Court of Appeal, and those judges sit in
Speaker 2: that division. They just hear appeals. They're not hearing murder
Speaker 2: trials etc. You know, it's a separate division in the court.
Speaker 2: I've had it in the UK for years and years.
Speaker 2: That's where it came from.
Speaker 1: Not always a good idea.
Speaker 2: But look anyway, another Jackman has made himself famous.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, indeed, now the other judge who's caused a
Speaker 1: bit of a stir or some weeks ago now was
Speaker 1: just a speech Jones of the High Court that was
Speaker 1: a cracker of a speech, made a speech to the
Speaker 1: what was it, the North Queensland Law Association. Somebody said
Speaker 1: he probably thought speaking at an out of the way
Speaker 1: function like that. No one read it, everybody's looked at it,
Speaker 1: and he's been the subject of a fair bit of criticism.
Speaker 1: The point that he's making is that the Samuel Griffith
Speaker 1: Society is now effectively advocating for a US style court
Speaker 1: stacking system.
Speaker 2: So again for listeners to Samuel Griffith Society as an
Speaker 2: obscure society. Samuel Griffith was a former Premier and Chief
Speaker 2: Justice of Queensland and on one of the first High
Speaker 2: Court judges in Australia and it's a conservative group of lawyers,
Speaker 2: and it's a bit like you know, some people might
Speaker 2: have heard of the Federalist Society in the US, which
Speaker 2: is the go to place for Trump and his administration
Speaker 2: to get their judges from reliably conservative people. So that
Speaker 2: was the essence of the attack.
Speaker 1: And they stand accused of advancing a sort of conservative
Speaker 1: agenda within the Samuel Griffith Society and attracting people who
Speaker 1: might eventually grow into High Court judges who will have
Speaker 1: a conservative outlook. And the conservative outlook means treating things
Speaker 1: like the Australian Constitution in the way it would have
Speaker 1: been treated one. So I hope they go to court
Speaker 1: in a whole and buggy, Yes, well exactly, and don't
Speaker 1: use telephones. Handwrite your judgments, yes, English, tea, no coffee.
Speaker 1: I want everything a field day with handwritten and judgments
Speaker 1: that will take you.
Speaker 2: This is sounding like ruined hg.
Speaker 1: He he Justice Bench. Jones described Samuel Griffith as Marx
Speaker 1: adjacent in the cause of making the point that they
Speaker 1: had completely missed it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you should say that I didn't know
Speaker 2: much about Jamuel Griffiths but there's I looked up a
Speaker 2: biography of him and I had to flick through it,
Speaker 2: and he was pro worker. This is before the Labor
Speaker 2: Party exists. Pro worker, you know, I mean conservative on
Speaker 2: some things, and I think I read that when it
Speaker 2: came to the Kannak workers as they used to be
Speaker 2: called from the Pacific Islands on sugar plantations, he was
Speaker 2: actually big on stopping abuse by employers, and you know,
Speaker 2: in those days, sort of radic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've always thought, though, Leks, that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: mythology about appointing judges in Australia that we pretend it's
Speaker 2: not political.
Speaker 1: Of course it's political.
Speaker 2: Course it's political.
Speaker 1: Every appointment is political.
Speaker 2: That's why you get appointed. Yeah, I'm too political. You
Speaker 2: can be political and then there's political.
Speaker 1: I told you Peter dunn't describe me as a left
Speaker 1: wing idea Logue. Fantastic appointed by Rob Hols. Judges are
Speaker 1: appointed Roberts.
Speaker 2: Was the Attorney General in Victoria. It's fantastic bloke and
Speaker 2: we're going to get him on one day.
Speaker 1: Yes, he may come on and say he regrets my appointment,
Speaker 1: but I don't think. I don't think so. One of
Speaker 1: the I think one of the serious things about this,
Speaker 1: the point that I took out of Justice Bench Jones's
Speaker 1: address was that he is concerned, I think, and Michael
Speaker 1: Kirby's written about this, about this sort of underlying criticism
Speaker 1: of the judgment in Marbo and associated judgments, I mean
Speaker 1: constantly criticized.
Speaker 2: I know Marbo. You know, the Marbo judgment, which I
Speaker 2: think every Australian knows, if only because they've watched the
Speaker 2: Castle where he talks about Marbo and the var and
Speaker 2: the constant you know, which of course accorded right to
Speaker 2: Aboriginal land for Aboriginal people with the concept of title
Speaker 2: like we all have in our suburban houses. It's not
Speaker 2: particularly radical. It's just an extension of the common law.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's you know, you read the judgments. There's
Speaker 2: nothing radical about it. No, I mean, honestly, I mean
Speaker 2: it's just I was working in politics at the time
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties and Richard Court was the Premier
Speaker 2: of Wa Conservative Margaret Court Tennis plaz brother and he
Speaker 2: used to come to these meetings of premiers and prime
Speaker 2: ministers and they'd all make an opening statement. And every
Speaker 2: opening statement he made that I heard, which was three
Speaker 2: or four of them. He'd say, Marbo is going to
Speaker 2: destroy Western Australia. The whole of Perth will be subject
Speaker 2: to a native title claim he produced these maps. I
Speaker 2: mean it was just absurd, you know, And this was
Speaker 2: sort of this fear campaign whipped up. Now what that
Speaker 2: he is thirty five years on Marlbo's part of the
Speaker 2: furniture except for a few obsessive and cranks. Talking about
Speaker 2: Robert Beach Jones, the judge who I don't know, but
Speaker 2: his wife is a playwright who's just done a play
Speaker 2: which has got rave reviews. And I can't remember the
Speaker 2: name of the play. But maybe while we're talking or
Speaker 2: look her up. Okay, her name, her name the brilliant
Speaker 2: Matthew here. We can't go past him. Her his name
Speaker 2: is Robert Beach Jones, and we just want to know
Speaker 2: who his wife is. Matthew. Matthew's like the guy you
Speaker 2: know every footy, every footy commentator has to go to.
Speaker 2: That's the stacks. How many games he plays, how many games?
Speaker 2: How many yards? How many yards is he achieved? That's
Speaker 2: his wife? Oh been to several Yeah, and what's the
Speaker 2: new play. There's one that's out at the moment or
Speaker 2: has been out recently, it'said huge. Yeah, Prima Facing Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well there's too there's Prima Facing in Nindauelia. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so so you know she's outstanding. Yeah, he's an interesting guy.
Speaker 1: He spent some time because you know, I live part
Speaker 1: of my time in Hobart, he's spent some time. I
Speaker 1: think he went to Bernie High School in the northwest
Speaker 1: coast of Tasmania. And apparently I don't know him at all,
Speaker 1: but really decent. I don't know either. I love the
Speaker 1: speech and I have empathy with a speech and with
Speaker 1: him as a judge he can look forward to a
Speaker 1: controversial career from him.
Speaker 2: And also these attacks or the judge shouldn't do this.
Speaker 2: The right wing judges do it all the time, always
Speaker 2: out there, you.
Speaker 1: Know, giving speeches. It's the whole other topic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's not go there.
Speaker 1: Let's go to a topic diary or heart Greg the
Speaker 1: abdul Haiti against the Commonwealth case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how raation judgment of the High Court. So people
Speaker 2: might have been following a series of cases since twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three where the High Court said, you know, because
Speaker 2: the Commonwealth Government had locked up a lot of people
Speaker 2: who had lost their visas because they'd committed criminal offenses
Speaker 2: generally not always, I don't think, but breach of visa
Speaker 2: and they can't go back to the country from which
Speaker 2: they came because they'll be persecuted and there's no reasonable
Speaker 2: prospect of that happening in the future. And what the
Speaker 2: High Court is said back in twenty twenty three, you
Speaker 2: can't just keep them there. You can't just detain people forever.
Speaker 2: In a day and then people will remember. The Commonwealth
Speaker 2: government then scrambled because they had to release people that
Speaker 2: put them on curfews. I mean, we had this hysteria
Speaker 2: in the media that somehow there was these hordes of
Speaker 2: people coming into the community who are going to attack
Speaker 2: us all. And then what happened was that the government's
Speaker 2: fix were struck down in a High Court.
Speaker 1: And this was predictable.
Speaker 2: If you falsely imprison someone, if you hold a person
Speaker 2: as either a government official or a police or even privately,
Speaker 2: and you don't have any lawful basis for doing so,
Speaker 2: it's called false imprisonment. Yeah, it's a taught it's a
Speaker 2: taught COMPENSI consert damages, Yeah, you consert. And so what's
Speaker 2: going to happen. This case was about a guy who'd
Speaker 2: been locked up for a long period of time. He
Speaker 2: and I think the Commonwealth said, it's about two hundred
Speaker 2: and forty people who are in this category will now
Speaker 2: be able to sue for false imprisonment. Commonwealth tried to
Speaker 2: say to the High Court, well, we thought the law
Speaker 2: was different, so we weren't falsely imprisoning them, and the
Speaker 2: High Court said, well, it's not the way it works.
Speaker 2: You're either were or you weren't. So the compensation claims
Speaker 2: are going to be huge. I mean, hard to quantify,
Speaker 2: but certainly well under the minions.
Speaker 1: The argument they ran, the Comonwealth ran was effectively, the
Speaker 1: officials who detained these people had a belief that what
Speaker 1: they were doing was valid. Yeah, and therefore, so therefore
Speaker 1: it's okay. Yeah. So if he's like, you're doing one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty kilometers an hour in the sixty zone, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the problem. Do you think that's an idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's okay, that's okay. That's the problem with that argument.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It brings up another point is the amount of money
Speaker 2: that's been spent on immigration cases over the years and
Speaker 2: compensation claims. I mean people forget there was seventy million
Speaker 2: paid by the Commonwealth for people detained on man As
Speaker 2: Island back in two thousand and seventeen, big class action.
Speaker 2: There's been numerous cases of people who have suffered physical
Speaker 2: and mental abuse, we been falsely in prisoned, been paid
Speaker 2: out millions, you know, hundreds of millions.
Speaker 1: So there's a core principle involved, goes back to the
Speaker 1: Magna Carta. Yeah, if you're going to lock someone up,
Speaker 1: it's got to be into a valid law, absolutely right.
Speaker 2: And in fact, I'm aware of some examples of where
Speaker 2: people have been held for a number of hours beyond
Speaker 2: the period in which police were entitled to hold them,
Speaker 2: and they've written to the police saying we're going to
Speaker 2: take legal action and they get a payout. There's one
Speaker 2: case in South Australia. I think he was only held
Speaker 2: for four and a half hours and he got five thousand.
Speaker 2: So the courts, I think take it pretty seriously because
Speaker 2: they should, and so they should because as you start,
Speaker 2: it's core principle. Gabriel Shipton is here with us today.
Speaker 2: Gabriel Shipton's become a very good friend of mine and
Speaker 2: we work together on Julian Assange's campaign. Gabriel really led
Speaker 2: that globally and from Australia, and he is Julian's brother.
Speaker 2: He's also a very good documentary filmmaker. Put out a
Speaker 2: great doco that many would have seen called Ithaca, which
Speaker 2: was about Julian and the quest to free him. Now
Speaker 2: he's set up an amazing project, I should declare I
Speaker 2: am involved in this called the Information Rights Project, which
Speaker 2: is really all about freedom of speech and protection of
Speaker 2: whistleblowers and journalists and others. So we thought he'd be
Speaker 2: a good person to come along, Les and yeah, still
Speaker 2: each wisdom on freedom of speech. Absolutely, I followed it
Speaker 2: during the time. Followed your reference during the time, Greg
Speaker 2: as well on behalf of Julian and the whole saga
Speaker 2: struck me as a horrifying nightmare for the people who
Speaker 2: are involved in it. Yeah, I mean, Gabriel, you, of
Speaker 2: course spent a lot of time in the United States.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many trips. How many trips did.
Speaker 4: You do at the end there I was going once
Speaker 4: a month, Yeah, yeah, once a month for a week
Speaker 4: at a time when Congress and Senate were in session.
Speaker 4: I've sort of lost count of the amount of trips.
Speaker 2: And I mean my memory of it was that, you know,
Speaker 2: you would have done thirty or forty trips.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something like that. Would have definitely gotten up there.
Speaker 4: But it did feel like a second home. Always to Washington, Yeah,
Speaker 4: always to Washington. We did traveled around the US quite
Speaker 4: a bit, but as we lobbied more and more, we
Speaker 4: sort of learned that, you know, we had to go
Speaker 4: where the power was, and that was Washington.
Speaker 1: Gabriel, There'll be people who know they know the name Dulanissange,
Speaker 1: but probably can't recall much of the detail about it
Speaker 1: except that it was in the news. Who might be
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, So can you give us just
Speaker 1: a really short, potted summary of, Hey, you got to
Speaker 1: the stage of being in the position of lobbying in
Speaker 1: the United States? Basically what stage of the whole case?
Speaker 2: We? Oh?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 4: So, Julian started WikiLeaks in two thousand and six. It
Speaker 4: was a leak publishing website. In twenty ten, they published
Speaker 4: Chelsea Manning's Leaks. Chelsea Manning was a military private who
Speaker 4: leaked vast tranchers of documents that she had access to,
Speaker 4: which was Afghanistan war files. Iraq War files, two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty thousand diplomatic cables from inside the diplomatic core
Speaker 4: of the United States then.
Speaker 1: And some famous film. Yes, that's right, and had a
Speaker 1: collateral murder video that was.
Speaker 4: The most famous piece, which showed a helicopter gunship mowing
Speaker 4: down a couple of Reuters journalists.
Speaker 1: With commentary, Yeah, with commentary with expressed pleasure having succeeded. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Come on.
Speaker 1: Ship, all right, master. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that was, yeah, the most famous piece and very
Speaker 4: moving and really exposed what was going on in the
Speaker 4: ground in Iraq, that nobody really really understood these machines
Speaker 4: of war and the people using them. That would happened
Speaker 4: in twenty eleven. Fast forward to twenty nineteen. It was
Speaker 4: the first Trump administration. Mike Pompeo, then CIA director, had
Speaker 4: basically declared a fatoir against Julian and Wiki League, saying
Speaker 4: We're coming after you no matter what. And it was
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen that Julian was taken from the ecuador
Speaker 4: In embassy where he had been given refuge for seven
Speaker 4: or for some years. For seven years or so, he'd
Speaker 4: been given asylum by Ecuador and then he was taken
Speaker 4: and put in a Bellmarsh maximum security prison, which was
Speaker 4: in London. And so this was during that period where
Speaker 4: the US had launched these extradition proceedings trying to get
Speaker 4: Julian back to the United States to prosecute him for
Speaker 4: publishing this information that embarrassed the US government majorly they
Speaker 4: wanted revenge. And it was during that period that this
Speaker 4: whole campaign and lobbying was taking place.
Speaker 1: And I think for many.
Speaker 4: Years there was a lot of lobbying and a lot
Speaker 4: of political work done in Europe, but nobody had really
Speaker 4: really dared to go into the United States. But I
Speaker 4: was never involved in wiki leagues, so I sort of
Speaker 4: had this, I guess, a blank slate that I could
Speaker 4: go there and I wouldn't be threatened by the authorities there.
Speaker 1: It was an allegation of sexual offending too, made in Sweden.
Speaker 1: Was it in Sweden?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was an original the original extradition request from
Speaker 4: Sweden related to it was a preliminary investigation that was
Speaker 4: going on in Sweden. And there's this, you know, these
Speaker 4: strange rules that were all sort of I guess at
Speaker 4: every point the system was sort of turned against Julian. Yes,
Speaker 4: and that led to him having to take refuge in
Speaker 4: the Ecuador.
Speaker 1: Because if he'd been extradited from the UK to Sweden
Speaker 1: had a bad track record turning people over. The next
Speaker 1: stop would be the United States.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the Sweden was a place where extraordinary rendition
Speaker 4: happened during the War on Terror, and so that was
Speaker 4: the fear that he would go to Sweden and then
Speaker 4: just be moved on straight away to the United States.
Speaker 1: And Greg, you are one of the lawyers.
Speaker 2: I was certainly involved at the Australian end and in
Speaker 2: the latter part doing more of the political work with
Speaker 2: Gabriel and the team and his dad and others. Of course,
Speaker 2: we got that great news that a deal had been struck.
Speaker 2: What had happened was that the appeal process in the UK.
Speaker 2: My view of it was that the judges in the
Speaker 2: UK were saying, we're not that comfortable with this extradition,
Speaker 2: and I think that they are in some difficulty. I mean,
Speaker 2: the alban Asi government was helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're pushing them along the whole way.
Speaker 2: We had to push them, We had to push them,
Speaker 2: but they were helpful. And of course what's it now
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, two.
Speaker 4: Years ago so twenty four, twenty four he stepped off
Speaker 4: that plane.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was doing a case in Newcastle and the
Speaker 2: judge said to me, I think today's going to be
Speaker 2: a very busy day for you. Mister Barnes, have already
Speaker 2: seen you on TV. If you need to take the
Speaker 2: day off, you know, I can just tell the jury,
Speaker 2: I said. I looked at my client and thought I
Speaker 2: better keep going. That was very nice of him, he said,
Speaker 2: not that I'm saying what side I'm on you because
Speaker 2: I'm Jones. I shouldn't say, because I shouldn't know. But
Speaker 2: it was a great result, and you know, but it
Speaker 2: should never have happened. It was a great injustice, Gabriel
Speaker 2: you one of the things you did do and a
Speaker 2: lot of these names are very familiar to Australian's Thomas Massey,
Speaker 2: Marjorie Taylor, Green, Tucker Carlson. I mean you, you know,
Speaker 2: you dealt with some really high profile people in the US,
Speaker 2: and I think what was interesting was that it was
Speaker 2: across the political spectrum too, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: And you mentioned some who were sort of I guess
Speaker 4: what they're called American firsts or mugger muga types and
Speaker 4: we also had people like Ilhan Omer, Alexandriacazio Cortez, like
Speaker 4: these sorts of figures from the other side, that sort
Speaker 4: of horseshoe politics I think they call, Yeah, the far
Speaker 4: left on the far right coming together, and we found
Speaker 4: that really really powerful. Like these news stories in themselves
Speaker 4: is when you know, when Alexandria Casio Cortez and madri
Speaker 4: Taylor Green both signed on a letter for calling for
Speaker 4: the freedom of Juliana Sange, that would make headlines just
Speaker 4: because it's those two signing on to a letter for themselves.
Speaker 4: But you really have to check your politics at the
Speaker 4: door sometimes when you go into some of these meetings
Speaker 4: and really drill down focus on the principle. Congress is
Speaker 4: like a it's like a real circus, you know, you'd
Speaker 4: walk into these office buildings. It's very different from our system.
Speaker 4: Like there's been a lot of lobbying around at the
Speaker 4: moment with this parliamentary past system. David pocox Us for
Speaker 4: transparency in the States. Anybody can walk into lobby anybody, Yeah, anybody,
Speaker 4: you know. I sort of learned this on the way.
Speaker 4: I like, oh, do we need to hire a lobbyist,
Speaker 4: you know, we waste a little bit of money on
Speaker 4: a lobbyist, and then I thought, oh, holy shit, I
Speaker 4: can just walk in and do this myself, and you know,
Speaker 4: put on my suit and then just started walking around
Speaker 4: Congress and you just go through security and you just
Speaker 4: go and knock on. You know, they call a door knocking,
Speaker 4: and that's literally what it is. You go and knock on.
Speaker 4: You know, Alexandria her door was always locked, actually, so
Speaker 4: someone had come to the door and then stick their
Speaker 4: head out and peer out and say, do you have
Speaker 4: an appointment? But a lot of the time it was
Speaker 4: walking the halls of Congress. You know, we'd have a
Speaker 4: hit list of you know, one hundred or so that
Speaker 4: we thought we could get to knocking the doors and
Speaker 4: just asking to go and see them. And sometimes it
Speaker 4: would work out. Sometimes you'd run into people in the
Speaker 4: hallway and sometimes yeah, you would people tell you to
Speaker 4: buger off. But through that method and through multiple multiple trips,
Speaker 4: we built up this coalition, this constituency in Congress, and
Speaker 4: we had allies in there who would be like, come
Speaker 4: and use our office if you ever need water or
Speaker 4: charge your phone or do some photocopying, come in and
Speaker 4: see us and then we would have these lobbying to
Speaker 4: like these congressional letters that we put together. But I
Speaker 4: was just thinking the other day, like I remember going
Speaker 4: to somebody's office and I hadn't really done my research
Speaker 4: on this person. And I walked into the office, and
Speaker 4: each person's congressional office they decorate them with all you know,
Speaker 4: where they've come from. Yeah, you know, sometimes you'd see
Speaker 4: a rugby ball in there and you're like, okay, I've
Speaker 4: got an inn. We can talk about rugby. All these
Speaker 4: different things that you know, you sort of learn the
Speaker 4: signs when you walk into someone's office. And this was
Speaker 4: a particular congressman from Louisiana, and I walked into his
Speaker 4: office and he had a huge photo of him jumping
Speaker 4: out of a helicopter as a Navy seal, and I thought,
Speaker 4: oh shit, what am I going to say to this
Speaker 4: guy in this meeting about Julian Assange. Anyway, went into
Speaker 4: his office and behind his desk he had a chin
Speaker 4: up bar there and all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So like a very fit guy.
Speaker 4: And you know, his major issue with Julian's case was
Speaker 4: the fact that well this was actually a sort of
Speaker 4: piece of propaganda that was put out by the opposing
Speaker 4: side that Julian revealed names of the myths. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: was one of the great myths, and so we always
Speaker 4: had to find ways around these myths. And I thought,
Speaker 4: what am I going to do with this guy, and
Speaker 4: like anyway, we started talking and talking, and eventually I
Speaker 4: sort of managed to convince him that these leagues had
Speaker 4: actually saved servicemen, that the leagues, and particularly in Afghanistan,
Speaker 4: what was published and Iraq, actually stopped the US government
Speaker 4: from sending troops there. Famously in Iraq was a cable
Speaker 4: that led to the Obama administration eventually pulling out troops
Speaker 4: from Iraq. And talking to him about that eventually convinced
Speaker 4: him that what Julian had done was a good thing,
Speaker 4: and he ended up coming to our side and said
Speaker 4: that he would sign on to a letter and actually
Speaker 4: gave me one of his challenge coins. They have these
Speaker 4: weird coins over there called challenge coins, and each congress
Speaker 4: person makes their own printed coin that they hand around
Speaker 4: to people, and he ended up giving me his challenge coins.
Speaker 4: So you just got to do the work in that sense,
Speaker 4: and you go from person to person and just pitch
Speaker 4: your case and you took.
Speaker 2: A group of Australian MPs over there, including Barnaby Joyce.
Speaker 2: But again, you know, I mean, I remember walking into
Speaker 2: a room with Gabriel and Canberra and there's Matt Canavan
Speaker 2: sitting next to Adam Bantt, and I said, nowhere else
Speaker 2: would this happen. I need you to tell this story
Speaker 2: because people need to hear this story about Barnaby and
Speaker 2: Johnny Depp and the Department of Justice.
Speaker 4: I guess it starts famously Barnaby Joyce. I think he's
Speaker 4: threatened to kill Bob. Was it doing this Johnny Depp's
Speaker 4: dogs for quarantine breaches? That's right, quarantine breaches. And I
Speaker 4: think Barnaby was was he deputy p He was Deputy
Speaker 4: Prime Minister at the time, And so we were going
Speaker 4: into these meetings over in the US, and Barnaby would
Speaker 4: relay this story about how he could have had Johnny
Speaker 4: Deppenamber Heard imprisoned, but Australia had done the US a
Speaker 4: favor in this context and let them go. And so
Speaker 4: he had first hand experience about how political intervention could
Speaker 4: happen through this case. And so we had all these
Speaker 4: meetings and we had this big meeting at the Department
Speaker 4: of Justice where we were taken in into the department
Speaker 4: and were sat across from a whole It must have
Speaker 4: been six or seven lawyers from the Department of Justice,
Speaker 4: and each one of our parliamentary delegation went round and
Speaker 4: had a you know, by that time, they'd all practiced
Speaker 4: their pitch really well, and each one had sort of
Speaker 4: segmented off a bit that they spoke about, and Barnaby's
Speaker 4: bit was this pistol and Booze story, and I think
Speaker 4: it was a way to show that Barnaby Joyce, who
Speaker 4: was at the top level of government, to show to
Speaker 4: these people that a political intervention is possible and it
Speaker 4: can happen. There was a lot of sort of sniggering
Speaker 4: going on and like, oh not the pistol and booze
Speaker 4: story and Johnny demp again. But you know, I think
Speaker 4: Barnaby's incredible. He's got this real way of relating things
Speaker 4: to people and.
Speaker 2: Bringing what they call a good retail apology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and bringing in these famous characters that
Speaker 4: everybody knew, and relating this story that he had direct
Speaker 4: firsthand experience with. I think it made an impression. It
Speaker 4: definitely is a memorable story.
Speaker 1: It's one of you.
Speaker 2: You've got many great stories, but just talking about what
Speaker 2: you do these days. And as I said, I've got
Speaker 2: some involvement in this Information Rights Project. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: So as you outline that campaign that went on for
Speaker 4: five years that you're very much involved with as well,
Speaker 4: we sort of found out that there was no organization
Speaker 4: that could do everything we wanted, and we regognized sort
Speaker 4: of and a couple of others. I just built the bikers.
Speaker 4: We were riding it in a sense, and we knew
Speaker 4: exactly what we needed, and we sort of cobbled together
Speaker 4: to form this incredibly successful campaign that turned the tide
Speaker 4: for Julian and An't eventually brought him home. And the
Speaker 4: Information Rights Project is born of that campaign, and it's
Speaker 4: all those learnings and experience that we had in fighting
Speaker 4: for Julian that we've now transferred into the Information Rights
Speaker 4: Project so that we can use it to help others
Speaker 4: that have been persecuted for exercising their right to freedom
Speaker 4: of speech. And it's people like journalists, whistleblowers and technologists
Speaker 4: like Julian, and we can come to their aid in
Speaker 4: a very sort of practical sense with funding, Like at
Speaker 4: the moment, we're funding a safe house for a four
Speaker 4: Corners whistleblower who's on the run, who's actually has credible
Speaker 4: threats from ISIS, and so we're funding his safe house,
Speaker 4: David McBride, who is currently serving a sentence for his
Speaker 4: revelations about the war in Afghanistan. We've supported his legal
Speaker 4: fees and supported his family as well, And so like
Speaker 4: Julian's case, we're very risky to start with, and that
Speaker 4: a lot of people didn't want to touch. We're sort
Speaker 4: of at the coal face with a lot of these
Speaker 4: whistleblower cases and journalists like Mary Costaketis who is facing
Speaker 4: a lawsuit for tweeting and taking on these cases that
Speaker 4: a lot of people are afraid to get around. And
Speaker 4: we've been going for a year only and we're already
Speaker 4: getting the ABC, the Human Rights Law Center already coming
Speaker 4: to us with these whistleblowers because there's just no one
Speaker 4: else to go. There's no one else out there. And
Speaker 4: we spoke recently at the Friends of Whistleblowers in the Parliament,
Speaker 4: so there's a new parliamentary bipartisan parliamentary group that's been formed.
Speaker 4: David Pocock is one of the leaders of that, but
Speaker 4: also Paul scar from the Liberals, and people like Bridget
Speaker 4: Mackenzie were at that meeting, and Andrew Wilkie. So we
Speaker 4: call it getting the band back together for the Friends
Speaker 4: of Julian group. But it's a lot of these same
Speaker 4: people that we lobbied very hard for in Parliament, they're
Speaker 4: now putting their energy into helping other whistleblowers. So that's
Speaker 4: really encouraging to see that sort of carry over. But
Speaker 4: also I think it's a little bit humbling that our
Speaker 4: group is only a year old and we're already speaking
Speaker 4: at these present groups do.
Speaker 1: A great job with that's elmon.
Speaker 2: You know. I think people don't realize if you're a
Speaker 2: whistleblower just how hard it is for you. Your life changes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 2: I mean Andrew Wilkie was of course an example. We've
Speaker 2: seen them in the law over the years, lex and
Speaker 2: you're just shunned despite all the supposed cultural change in organizations.
Speaker 2: Oh we want you to come forward when you do,
Speaker 2: they really don't.
Speaker 1: They don't, They really don't want you to come forward,
Speaker 1: particularly in government.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the secrecy is just me It just seems
Speaker 2: to be DNA of government and yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 2: that's what we're up fighting against. All right, Well, look
Speaker 2: we can have here here all day, but we'll get
Speaker 2: you back because the work you're doing is fantastic. I
Speaker 2: think what's really important is that out of the Assange cases,
Speaker 2: I know that this is one of the things we
Speaker 2: used to talk about. Gabriel was basically and I said
Speaker 2: this to Andrew Bolt once on the sky he had
Speaker 2: me on and I said, look, you're sitting there at
Speaker 2: sky and you say something the Americans don't like, reveal
Speaker 2: something Americans don't like. You could be on the end
Speaker 2: of our extradition request, you know, the Americans coming to
Speaker 2: the Australians and saying we want to charge Bolt. And
Speaker 2: he thought about that and he said, yeah, no, Look
Speaker 2: I get it. And I think that's what people don't
Speaker 2: realize is that that was the danger of that case,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: And there's that prosecutorial pathway, and prosecutors know that they
Speaker 4: can put someone through the ringer even if they don't
Speaker 4: get a you know, they're not going before a judge
Speaker 4: or a jury. They know that they can bring these
Speaker 4: extradition hearings. They can have someone in prison for five years.
Speaker 2: They they can shut you down. Yeah, and that's the
Speaker 2: whole idea exactly. Okay, well, thank you gabriel a fantastic.
Speaker 1: Really are thank you for going in. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: part of the podcast.
Speaker 2: Where are we going to be next time? Les, We're
Speaker 2: going to be here. I might be overseas into state.
Speaker 2: But what I want to assure people is it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. This is I just thought this is
Speaker 1: as reliable as the rest is politics.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. It's on the dot every week.
Speaker 1: Question is who's Rory Stuart as it you or me.
Speaker 2: I'd rather be Rory than Alistair Campbell given Alistairs background.
Speaker 1: Well, don't say anymore because we might want to get
Speaker 1: him on.
Speaker 2: Yeah we might. That's true. All right, Thanks good yeah,
Speaker 2: Matthew all next time, See you guys.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Bravecasting Media, edited by Michael Tankard,
Speaker 1: original music by Justin Humphries from Phoenix Sound Studios. This
Speaker 1: podcast is recorded on the lands of the Orangerie people
Speaker 1: of the Cooler Nation. We pay our respects to their elders, past,
Speaker 1: present and emerging. Thank you for listening. See you next week.