The one thing Assange's team wants to get out of Canberra visit

A pardon from the United States president is the final prize sought on behalf of the WikiLeaks founder, who returned to Australia after a 14-year legal saga as a convicted spy.

Fronting the media on Thursday, flanked by members of the Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group, Stella Assange said her husband had effectively pleaded guilty "to journalism" rather than espionage.

But the US Justice Department said in a statement that, unlike news organizations, WikiLeaks, had published classified documents without removing identifying information, creating "a grave and imminent risk to human life".

A spokeswoman for the US Embassy declined to comment when asked if Mr Assange or his lawyers had sought a meeting with officials in Canberra.

Asked about the campaign for a presidential pardon, Mr Assange's US lawyer Barry J Pollack said he hoped, in time, "the same support that he received when he was in prison will again gather steam".

"The president of the United States has absolute pardon power," Mr Pollack told reporters in Parliament House.

"President Biden, or any subsequent president, absolutely can - and, in my mind, should - issue a pardon to Julian Assange."

He said there was "no evidence that any harm has befallen any individual anywhere in the world as a result of Mr Assange's publications".

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said he would give "serious consideration" to pardoning Mr Assange if elected.

Mr Assange was convicted of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the US Espionage Act on Wednesday, after pleading guilty in a deal that sentenced him to time served.

Ms Assange was on Thursday asked if "Julian indicated to you that, if he was given access to classified documents again in future that he would do it all again"?

"Julian just got back from a 72-hour-long flight to freedom and five years of incarceration in a high-security prison and seven years before that arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy," she said.

"He is just savouring freedom for the first time in 14 years. He needs time to rest and recover and he is just rediscovering normal life. And he needs space to do that."

Ms Assange met with Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Thursday morning, when she had been expected to raise her wish for Mr Assange to be pardoned.

Asked about the meeting, Senator Wong told reporters it had been "a private conversation" and was tight-lipped on the question of a presidential pardon.

"That is a matter for Mr Assange and his legal team, and the decision on that is a matter for the United States," she said.

Earlier, the minister told Channel 7's Sunrise when asked if the Albanese government would support the push for a pardon: "We would respect US processes".

She told the ABC that while freedom of the press was "a key principle of our democracy", so too was the protection of national security information, "and we have very clear laws in Australia to protect that information".

Opposition Home Affairs spokesperson James Paterson said while the Coalition "has welcomed his decision to plead guilty so that he can be released", Mr Assange was not an innocent man.

"I think it is a mistake, as some have done ... to make comparisons between Julian Assange and Cheng Lei, Sean Turnell and Kylie Moore-Gilbert," he told Sky on Thursday.

"These were Australians who were innocent, who were persecuted for other reasons by authoritarian powers ... That is very different to what Mr Assange has done."

Senator Paterson said the "very serious national security offences" the Wikileaks founder had pleaded guilty to "are not just offences against the United States".

"They're offences against the Five Eyes intelligence gathering alliance, including Australia, because they put the sources of that alliance at grave risk."

Mr Pollack said, when asked about a clause in Mr Assange's plea deal requiring him to instruct the editor of WikiLeaks to destroy any classified US information still in its possession: "The materials that we are talking about are now more than a decade old. I don't know to what extent any still existed or what possible value they might have - certainly no national security value."

Nonetheless, he said, Mr Assange had complied with the clause.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said when asked if Mr Albanese's phone call to Julian Assange on Wednesday night as his flight touched down would damage Australia's relationship with the US: "I think the bilateral relationship between Washington and Canberra is as strong as it has ever been.

"However, for some time now, the incarceration of Julian Assange was a thorn in the side of that relationship. It was niggling away on the margins.

"That has now been fixed, so I now see reason to be very optimistic about the bilateral relationship. That thorn has been pulled out."

Earlier, Opposition Foreign Affairs spokesperson Simon Birmingham said there would be "many Americans who think that it's inappropriate for the Australian Prime Minister to provide that type of homecoming welcome to Julian Assange".

"It's not necessary nor appropriate for Anthony Albanese to welcome home Julian Assange on the same day he's admitted to espionage acts," Senator Birmingham told reporters.

In a post on X on Wednesday afternoon, US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy expressed gratitude to the Australian Government for "their commitment and assistance in this process".

"The return of Julian Assange to Australia brings this long-standing and difficult case to a close," the statement said.

Mr Assange flew into Canberra on a charter flight accompanied by US Ambassador Kevin Rudd and UK High Commissioner Stephen Smith, who were instrumental in securing his freedom along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Senator Wong.

His team launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover the flight cost, which WikiLeaks said was $782,000 and was owed to the Australian government.

The WikiLeaks founder entered a plea deal with the US Department of Justice at hearing on the Pacific island Saipan on Wednesday, with Mr Rudd by his side, after seven years holed up in London's Ecuadorian embassy and five years in Belmarsh Prison in the UK.