Nationals frontbencher Barnaby Joyce was one of the MPs who made the trip to the US to advocate for Julian Assange’s release.
Speaking over on Nine, he says it was a “long journey” to get to last night.
“It was at the end a big, big crowd, but at the start [it was a] very small group,” he says.
He says that he had to consider if Assange was his son or daughter, “would you support this person?”
“We can’t just have Australian citizens, whipped off to third countries,” Joyce says.
“He didn’t [commit] a crime in Australia. He wasn’t part of a crime in Australia. He wasn’t a citizen of the United States. He wasn’t in the United States, where the offence is occurred to them, and we’re about to send him to the United States for 175 years in jail?”
“If you said that was happening to your son or daughter, would you expect Australian legislators to go into bat for them? Of course, you would. And this is this is something where I’m really happy that it’s come to a conclusion.”