Mr Assange, 48, has now completed his sentence for breaching bail as a result of that asylum. He is being held in Belmarsh Prison outside London as the British government considers an extradition application from the United States over allegations he conspired to break into a classified Pentagon computer. Should he be convicted he faces 175 years in prison. His hearing will be heard in February. Julian Assange speaks to the media from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in May 2017. Credit:Getty Images Ms Robinson said Mr Assange should be supported as a journalist and publisher for his release of millions of pages of secret US military and diplomatic cables, and criticised Australian governments of both parties for failing to intervene on his behalf. "The Australian government has not, as far as I am aware, raised any objection to the treatment of Julian Assange by the United States or an objection to his indictment under the espionage act," she said. "One wonders, had the Australian government raised their concern about this treatment of an Australian citizen whether the Trump administration would have pursued these charges." She said that it would have a devastating effect on free speech around the world if the US was able to successfully prosecute a journalist who was not a US citizen for actions he had not undertaken on US soil.

"This is the first time in US history that the espionage act has been used to charge a publisher, let alone to then seek the extradition of a foreign publisher to the United States," she said. "We have had Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, all kinds of free speech groups coming forward to say that this basically criminalising journalism ... it is placing a massive chill on national security journalism." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Last week the former foreign minister and Australian high commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer, dismissed the idea that an Australian government intervention might save Mr Assange from extradition. "All people are equal before the law. Julian Assange doesn't get some dispensation from the law of the land, in this case of the UK, because you happen to agree with him or think he did the right thing," Mr Downer said.

"If the United States wants to extradite him, and extradition proceedings are underway, Australia can't [intervene] even if it wanted to. That is the thing about these emotional narratives – they don't even make sense." Mr Assange has faced criticism outside government circles for his conduct and some challenge the assertion that he is a journalist. Loading "Instead of sorting through the hundreds of thousands of files to seek out the most important or relevant and protect the innocent, he dumped them all onto his website, free for anybody to go through, regardless of their contents or the impact they might have had," Australian journalist Peter Greste wrote in the Herald earlier this year. Mr Greste was arrested and detained while reporting in Egypt and is founder and director of the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.

"Journalism demands more than simply acquiring confidential information and releasing it unfiltered onto the internet for punters to sort through. It comes with responsibility." The investigation by Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign found that WikiLeaks had contacts within the Trump campaign and released documents that were stolen from the Democratic Party by Russian hackers. Loading The report noted that half an hour after news broke about a recording of Mr Trump saying he liked to sexually assault women WikiLeaks released its first tranche of Democratic Party emails. On Friday, Roger Stone, an ally of Mr Trump’s and self-described political "dirty trickster" was convicted of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and lying to Congress over testimony he gave about ties to WikiLeaks.