AFTER decades of campaigning for greater transparency from government, former South Coast MP John Hatton has slammed the attacks on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
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Mr Hatton said the attacks on Mr Assange leading to his arrest showed governments were determined to enforce the privacy of “immature conversations and decision-making, and the spats that occurred between world leaders”.
He claimed it was all aimed at “saving governments from embarrassment”.
“It is an outrage that a person should be facing a long jail term simply for embarrassing governments,” Mr Hatton said.
“The only weapon that should be available to governments is law.”
Mr Hatton said the government had no case to make unless it could show information published on the website revealed “high-end secrets” or endangered lives, and “so far they haven’t demonstrated that”.
He also questioned why Mr Assange was being hounded, when governments were taking little action against the people sending information to the WikiLeaks website, or the newspapers publicising the information.