Founding members of Blue Mountains for Assange (BMA) have called on the new prime minister to pick up a loudhailer and a phone in defence of Australian Julian Assange.
The call comes in the wake of the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel issuing the order last Friday for Mr Assange to be extradited to the United States to be tried under the US Espionage Act.
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Prior to the announcement, Anthony Albanese responded to a media question about Assange, saying "sometimes diplomacy is best done without a loudhailer."
Kerry Brown a founding member of BMA, said the prime minister's comment "gave fleeting hope our new government was negotiating behind the scenes".
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"If so, it has failed abysmally. The extradition has since been approved with barely a squeak from the Australian government.
"We think it is time for our prime minister to pick up his loudhailer and announce to the UK, US and the world that the Australian government and people want Julian Assange freed and all attempts to prosecute him dropped."
Mr Assange has been in Belmarsh Prison in London for four years while he fights an extradition order to the USA. He faces up to 175 years in prison.
As editor of Wikileaks, Mr Assange oversaw the release of over one million confidential US government documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq War and the US Guantanamo Bay military prison.
He also released the "collateral murder" video filmed by a US military helicopter crew as they gunned down unarmed men and children in a Baghdad street.
BMA founder, Leila Wedd, said: "It is profoundly disappointing and beyond our understanding that our newly elected Labor government still has not committed to securing Assange's immediate release.
"We ask our new prime minister to take independent MP Andrew Wilkie's advice - pick up the phone to the UK prime minister and US president and say, 'stop this madness'."
Fellow BMA activist, Nigel Glassey, said: "The American government has pursued an Australian citizen on what has been proved time and again to be completely trumped up charges.
"I have spent many hours on... street stalls talking to people about Julian Assange, but never have I seen such an outpouring of concern now there is a real possibility that he is facing death in an American military prison
"It is time for the Albanese government to stand up for the principle of free speech. People are looking for his government to take meaningful action.
"Should Assange die in prison, many people will judge this Labor government as having failed Assange, failed the principle of free speech and failed Australia."
