Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise in this place to support the motion by the member for Cook. I would like to acknowledge the work of the member for Cook for many years in this parliament on this issue and others, particularly his work as the chair of Amnesty International in the parliament as well as his work with the Australian Parliamentary Christian Fellowship group.

I also join with the member for Cook and the member for Chisholm in expressing gratitude to the Governor-General, in particular, to the Prime Minister, to senior ministers and to the many members, senators and staff in this place who made a tremendous effort to prevent the execution of Mr Nguyen, whom the member for Chisholm has so eloquently spoken about. I cannot help but note the increasing numbers of young people who are caught smuggling drugs and the vulnerability of young people in this regard.

I support the words of the member for Chisholm as to how much better it would be if all the authorities throughout our region, in particular, would concentrate their efforts on catching, prosecuting and dealing with those who produce the drugs and those who distribute the drugs at the top end. I understand that it is well known that the traffic is coming from countries close to Singapore, yet it seems to me that little is really done to deal with these countries that seem to continue to support this trade within their boundaries and do little to prosecute those responsible for it.

Our young people are simply recruited as mules, as couriers, in the distribution chain. They are way down the bottom of that chain. It seems to me that for Mr Nguyen and others to lose their lives for making a mistake as a young person is a terrible occurrence and an act that belongs in a barbaric age, not in the 21st century. So I also strongly call for our parliament, our government, to continue to advocate within our region and with our regional neighbours to abolish the death penalty—or, at least as an interim measure, to call for a moratorium on executions—knowing that, as the member for Cook has said, there are several young people awaiting the death sentence today. What a dreadful waste of young lives; what a tragedy for the families and for the communities. No crime really deserves the ultimate, which is the ending of a life.

As the motion says, I would like to ‘encourage our regional neighbours to ratify the United Nations International Convention on Civil and Political Rights and the Second Optional Protocol’. This is an important motion. I was made aware that, apart from the types of drugs that are grown, our region faces an increasing challenge in dealing with manufactured drugs—drugs that can be baked up in people’s kitchens, drugs that are much more difficult to deal with. I know that none of us speaking on this motion today sanction the trade in drugs, whether they are manufactured or whether they are grown, but we all agree that the death penalty is not—

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