This development has brought to a head an issue a succession of Australian governments have been doing their best to sweep under the carpet since June, 2012.

Assange, at one time one of the best known Australian in the world, had sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid being arrested by British police and sent to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations.

The Wikileaks founder, and his many supporters, feared once he was placed in custody he could be sent to America where he faced a possible death sentence on espionage and conspiracy charges.

Assange, whose talent for self-promotion and attention seeking has been a cornerstone of his career, was not the easiest guest. He was sent a memo last July warning him to pay for his Internet use, clean up after his cat and generally get his act together.

The cat, reportedly handed over to an animal shelter for rehoming last year, was once almost as famous as its master with its own Instagram account.

While Sweden quietly dropped the sexual assault case in 2017, the United States indicated on Friday it could still be interested in taking action against the man who, rightly or wrongly, drew the world's attention to the actions of American soldiers in Iraq and other instances of a superpower acting badly.

The most dramatic release was of the so-called Collateral Murder video which showed US troops shooting and killing 18 people from a helicopter in Iraq in April, 2010.

President Trump, a high-profile supporter of WikiLeaks during his election campaign, said his Attorney General was considering what to do. It is no secret the US is still keenly interested in Assange's fate.

The challenge facing Shorten and Morrison is that despite his eccentric behaviour, Assange remains a high profile figure who enjoys a great deal of support here and around the world.

His work in setting up WikiLeaks, and the subsequent release of more than 10 million documents, was praised by information transparency advocates and civil libertarians and recognised with numerous international accolades and awards.

These included The Economist's New Media Award in 2008, being named Time Person of the Year (Reader's Choice) in 2010, the Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal in 2011, the Voltaire Free Speech Award in 2011, and the Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts in 2013.

He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year by Nobel Laureate, Mairead Maguire. WikiLeaks had been nominated for the award in 2011.

It is, in view of this, hard to see how either Shorten or Morrison can continue to ignore the Assange issue.

We have, after all, seen a significant intervention in the case of refugee footballer, Hakeem Al-Araibi, in recent times even though he was not an Australian citizen at that point.

Assange is an embarrassment for both leaders in that Australia's record of indifference towards his fate began when Nicola Roxon was the Attorney-General in the Gillard government.

"Australia would not expect to be a party to any extradition discussions that may take place between the United States and the United Kingdom ...," Ms Roxon told Assange's lawyers in 2012.

They retaliated by describing the letter as an "Australian act of abandonment".

Only time will tell if this policy, which has been in place for seven years, is about to change.