WI: Senator Julian Assange, 2013

In 2013, Julian Assange, then (as now) in house arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, founded the Wikileaks Party and stood for the Australian Senate in the state of Victoria. Naturally, he didn't win.

But let's handwave a series of events which gets him elected - maybe the Greens decide to endorse his candidacy or the Minor Parties Alliance control preference flows towards him or something. What happens next? Is he allowed to travel to Australia? Is he able to make the Australian Government any more transparent? Do Wikileaks continue under Parliamentary Privilege? And what happens when he inevitably loses his seat in 2016 (or earlier, if he's so irritating that the double dissolution is called earlier)?
 
Being a Senator doesn't make him immune from prosecution, if he left the Embassy he'd get arrested. IIRC Ricky Muir didn't take his Senate seat for some 6 or so months after he got elected, so JA would be a private citizen until then if he was elected in 2013.

However if he did manage to get out and take up his seat in the Senate he'd find that nobody would work with him and he'd be denied any sort of information because he'd broadcast it. What he did get hold of he'd use to ruin whatever project or deal it was because his idiotic obsession with opening other people's mail is more import to him than getting good legislation passed or projects approved and funded.
 

Isaac Beach

Banned
Well presuming the charges laid against him are not dropped and he has to remain in the Ecuadorian Embassy he'd not be able to take his seat anyway due to not being able to take his oath before the Governor-General, as per section 42 of the Constitution:

42. Oath or affirmation of allegiance
Every senator and every member of the House of Representatives shall before taking his seat make and subscribe before the Governor-General, or some person authorised by him, an oath or affirmation of allegiance in the form set forth in the schedule to this Constitution.

Unless the Governor-General travels to London -which he wouldn't- or they bend the rules to allow a Skype oath or something -which they won't-.
 
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