STORY: Australia's opposition on Thursday cautioned the government against hailing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a hero as he spent his first night in 14 years as a free man back at home in Australia.
Assange, freed by a U.S. court on the remote Pacific island of Saipan after over five years in a British high-security jail, returned to Australia to an ecstatic welcome on Wednesday evening after pleading guilty to violating the U.S. Espionage Act.
::File
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who supported Assange's release years before taking office in 2022, welcomed him home with a phone call...which the leader later described as a "very warm discussion".
::Wikileaks via X
The conservative opposition meanwhile warned against portraying Assange as a hero, citing his decade of avoiding prosecution and guilty plea for conspiring to disclose classified defense documents.
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Opposition leader in the Senate Simon Birmingham also cautioned Albanese against meeting Assange, saying his release could strain Australia's ties with the United States.
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However, Foreign Minister Penny Wong told ABC Radio Assange's release posed no threat to Australia-U.S. ties.
And lawmaker Andrew Wilkie told Reuters at a press conference ties between Australia and the U.S. are as strong as it has ever been.
"For some time now, the incarceration of Julian Assange was a thorn in the side of that relationship. It was just niggling away on the margins. That has now been fixed, so I now see a reason to be very optimistic about the bilateral relationship. You know, that thorn has been pulled out."
::Wikileaks via X
Assange's supporters and free speech advocates see him as a victim for exposing alleged U.S. wrongdoing and potential crimes, including in Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, when WikiLeaks in 2010 published thousands of classified military documents and diplomatic cables.
But the U.S. government has long said his actions were reckless, and that he had put agents' lives at risk by publishing the names of government sources.
