Here's hoping. Under the Westminster parliamentary system you can say anything in parliament and not be held liable. Everything said is then transcribed and made available as a public record. It's the ideal soapbox.
Not quite "anything" - parliamentary privilege doesn't extend to anything deemed to be "unparliamentary language". For example, you can't call a fellow member of parliament a liar:
I'm all for Assange's senate bid, but given he doesn't seem to have declared/decided which state/territory he will be running for the Senate in, I'm curious as to how these data can be considered accurate/representative of any actual electoral outcome.
It's pretty easy for a minor party (well, 'one of the', not 'a') to pick up the last senate seat in a state, given the way they're allocated. It all depends on which way the preferences flow.
Yeah, you're probably right -- I went and had a look back at 2007. Xenophon won, but a Green also picked up a Senate seat (in SA). The Greens polled just 6.5% and picked it up off preferences.
I was figuring his vote would come at the expense of the Greens, but even in that case the major parties were marginal enough on the 6th seat to get the Greens in.
(Plus the DLP won a seat in Vic in 2010, off just 2.3% of the primary).
I expect the next election will be quite a shake-up, especially in the Senate - certainly can't see the major parties gaining. So, you're probably right that preferences will dominate the 5/6th seats.
Th government is on the nose at the moment. So is the opposition! A dead fish has a good chance of being elected right now, if they aren't a member of the major Liberal or Labor parties...
Running for the Senate would be an interesting move, to say the least, and would probably create a headache for the Australian government that they don't want.
I imagine Assange's lawyers have done their homework and have established that from being on house arrest in the UK he could run for the Senate (contrary to what 1-2 commenters here have said).
There's probably few better elections to run in than the next one. It looks like the current Labor government will be decimated in the next election (in some ways history is repeating itself from the Hawke-Keating years, which is interesting).
Yet the population seems disillusioned with the opposition too. My biggest problem with the opposition is their pointless continued opposition to the NBN.
Anyway, the big potential headache for the Australian government here is Assange would go from being a citizen possibly being extradited to the Sweden (and potentially the US) to being a sitting Senator being extradited. While he wouldn't be a head of state and enjoy those protections, I'm not sure if there's any real precedent for extradition of someone in the government like this.
Australia should be standing up to the US over this however so it's a headache I would invite and welcome upon our government.
That all being said, I'm not sure I buy the theory that Assange's extradition to Sweden is to get his extradited to the US. I seem to remember reading something saying it was just as easy to extradite him from Britain so who knows.
How many times does Turnbull have to say he isn't going to rip up the NBN?
He has two main problems:
He doesn't want labour getting credit for something liberal can.
He doesn't believe labour is managing the project in with best financial interest of the public and feels up to $10 billion could be saved.
35,000 new homes built last year had fresh new copper laid by Telstra instead of fibre.
That copper isn't old, damaged, and incapable of fast speeds. It is brand new and was a complete waste of money. Except for Telstra shareholders who get to profit even more off the labour government once tax payers buy it all back to replace with fibre.
I think the theory is that with the current displeasure British citizens have with their government, extraditing Assange at te behest of the US wouldn't go down so well. On the flip side, Sweden has shown that they are willing to cooperate with US interests.
Essentially it's possible to extradite him from both countries, it would be a PR nightmare to do it from Britian
There's also the chance of a Double Dissolution Election. Assuming that the Liberal Party don't get a majority in the Senate, they may decide to call one to pass legislation repealing the Carbon ETS/Tax which Labor are about to introduce.
If that happens -- then the requirement for a Senate Seat goes from 16.6% of the Vote to 8.33% of the Vote.
Should Assange win it would not make him part of the government. Senators are only part of the Government if their party is in power.
I'm not sure what the legal issues surrounding extradition of a senator would be though.
Assange's main power would be through participating on Senate committees where he can ask questions of government. He would also be able use parliament as a soap box.
I don't think the Government (regardless of which party is in power) would be that worried about it through - unless he somehow ends up with the balance of power (unlikely).
The Greens will probably lose a spot due to his running.
You are right about it being just as easy to extradite from Britain. However, the U.S is not likely to serve him until all current cases are resolved. His legal defence is concentrated on making it as hard as possible to attack Wikileaks or anyone involved. It's basically showing that he will fight everything, at every point, all the way.
Despite what the movies tell you there is no such thing as true immunity.
If you commit a crime in another country under "diplomatic immunity", your host country must decide to waive your immunity and allow you to be prosecuted, or have you expelled back to your native country. The receiving country could then request extradition for a criminal trial (so you essentially get kicked out as a diplomat, and drug back as a citizen).
In the specific case of Assange, professional activity outside official functions isn't protected at all. So if Australia did come to his defense and claimed he was acting in a professional capacity for doing something like leaking US military secrets, it would be an act of state sponsored terrorism.
How would that be, in any way, shape or form, terrorism? If anything,
it might be espionage or something in that vein. Calling whistle-blowing
terrorism is disingenuous at best.
Terrorism is loosely defined as actions by an individual or organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
Almost word for word the mission statement of Wikileaks.
That's the stupidest definition of terrorism I have ever seen.
You could call pretty much ANYTHING slightly subversive terrorism
under this definition.
Movements for social change? Terrorism.
Peaceful demonstrations against government policy? Terrorism.
Any sort of activism? Terrorism.
I stand by my opinion: calling whistle-blowing
terrorism is a ridiculous appeal to emotion, and anyone who even dares
to attempt it should be laughed out of the building.
As far as I know (from an interview with Geoffrey Robertson, Assange's lawyer, but also known as a respected senior lawyer and public figure in both the UK and Australia) this is incorrect. It is possible to be elected when overseas, however there seems to be a grey area as to what would happen to his seat if he was unable to return to the country to occupy it in parliament.
It's not really a grey area. There have been politicians who have failed to be present enough days in their electorates in the past and suffered the wrath of the electoral commission.
This is quite simply untrue. There is no requirement to live in an electorate to represent that electorate in Parliament, and in fact in the past it was very common for country electorates to be represented by city politicians. Antony Green has a great post debunking this myth:
Could you be thinking of housing allowance scandals? This is where elected politicians claim rent from the government for rent for houses they're not really living in.
The requirement that does exist that will be problematic for Assange is that a Senator can lose their position if they are absent without leave of the Senate.
