The WikiLeaks founder hopes a Coalition victory in September will bring on a purge of Julia Gillard's Labor party, and insists there is no constitutional barrier to his own election to the senate

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

Julian Assange has delivered a scathing attack on the Australian government in an interview marking one year since he walked into the Ecuadorean embassy in London and sought asylum.

Assange told the press he hoped the predicted Coalition win in September would clean out the Labor party and prime minister Julia Gillard's "cronies", who he said had relied too heavily on the United States and abandoned himself and WikiLeaks.

"The duty of that government was to protect an Australian organisation and citizen, and it did just the opposite," he said.

"It bent over more than any country in the world to publicly satisfy the US."

Assange has many reasons for his dislike of the current Australian government, which he said was "as perverted a government as you can possibly imagine".

He took aim at Gillard for her initial labelling of him as a criminal and her push for a government inquiry into WikiLeaks, and at former attorney-general Robert McClelland, who considered charging Assange with treason.

Despite being granted asylum by Ecuador, Assange has refused to leave its London embassy for fear the UK government will extradite him to the US, where he may face espionage charges relating to WikiLeaks' release of classified documents, or to Sweden, where he faces accusations of sexual assault.

"We know there is an ongoing investigation in the US and we know I am a target of the federal grand jury," he said.

"There is a 99.97% chance that I will be indicted, so if the Swedish government drops their request (to go to Sweden) tomorrow, I still cannot leave the embassy. My lawyers have advised me I should not leave the embassy because of the risk of arrest and extradition to the US."

He raised the possibility of travelling to the airport in a diplomatic car to avoid arrest, but noted: "We know that the UK police were instructed (in the Sweden case) to break international law and arrest me even if I was in a diplomatic vehicle and had diplomatic immunity."

Assange's WikiLeaks party, which is fielding candidates for the senate in several states in the September elections, has been buoyed by recent polls which suggest 20 per cent of Australians are considering voting for it.

The party would announce more senate candidates, including well-known names, Assange said.

He dismissed AAP reports that, should he be elected to the senate, he could face a constitutional challenge because he has lived overseas for so long.

"Various claims have been made over the past year by so-called election experts and they've all fallen one by one," he said. "I've personally researched the detail of the constitution and its interpretation."

The outcome of the election would determine whether he considered it safe to return to Australia.