The Australian Wikileaks Party To Run Senate Candidates In Three States

"We certainly think that we're in the mix to win a Senate seat in each of the three states. We will be announcing candidates over the next few weeks, they won't be announced today. But we will be focusing very much, as I say, on the Senate as a house of review and of course that doesn't rule out the possibility of running a House of Representatives candidate if an appropriate candidate came forward we'd certainly look at that," said campaign director, Greg Barnes.Barnes, a high-profile opponent of Britain's monarchy and former Australian Republican Movementhead, has been appointed by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to run his campaign and spearhead his rare absentee bid for a seat in Australia's upper house of parliament.

Assange has been holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for nine months and Barnes added that the election was not a legal strategy on Assange's part to get back to Australia.

"If that were the case he would simply put his name down for the Senate, run in the ungrouped category and hope to get elected. This is actually a much broader movement. This is a party with, as Sam has said, with well in excess of 500 members, it is a party which will run other candidates and it's about those other candidates as well as being about Julian," said Barnes.

The former computer hacker, an Australian citizen, announced last year he would run for the 76-seatSenate and would use the protection of parliament to champion free speech and break court suppression orders.

Assange is considered a long shot to win a Senate seat as he would need to attract about 15 percent of votes in the Victoria state. If he wins, he would be able to take his seat from July 1, 2014, but would need to return to Australia to be sworn in.

If he wins a Senate seat, he would be covered by Australia's parliamentary privilege rules, which protect politicians against legal action over comments made in parliament.

Barnes, a high-profile political campaigner at home, said Assange's party had already secured backing from a prominent Melbourne philanthropist, former Citibank executive Philip Wollen, and needed 500 members to fulfil party registration.

Assange, 41, whose website angered the United States by releasing thousands of secret diplomatic cables, took sanctuary in Ecuador's embassy in London last June, jumping bail after exhausting appeals in the British courts against extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.

Assange burst into global prominence in 2010 when Wikileaks released secret footage, military files and diplomatic cables about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, prompting a furious response from theUnited States.