Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On a plane flight recently I read a legal thriller by John Grisham called The Confession, about a man who had committed the vicious rape and murder of a high school cheerleader nine years earlier. In the novel an innocent young African-American man who has been convicted of the murder now only has four days before his death sentence is carried out. The real murderer, now suffering from an inoperable brain tumour, decides to confess. By the time he manages to persuade the authorities that he really is the murderer by leading them to the buried body the young African-American man has already been executed. As is often the case in real life, there was no happy ending to this story.

I wish the only time an innocent person was executed was in a novel or a movie. The reality, however, is that it has happened all too often throughout history and wherever the death penalty exists. The reality is that it continues to happen. In Western Australia we have had a number of cases of murder convictions being overturned when the innocent persons had already spent many years in prison. It is fortunate we no longer have the death penalty, or the compensation for a wrongful conviction would have gone uncollected.

If ever I need a grim reminder of those gory days I only need to walk around the corner from my electorate office to the old Fremantle prison and see the small dark chamber where people were hanged. Hangings at Fremantle prison would take place at 8 am on Monday mornings. The condemned would be woken at 5.30 am, showered, transferred to the condemned cell, given the services of a spiritual adviser and offered a glass of whisky. On leaving the condemned cell they would be taken to the gallows. Usually, only 60 seconds elapsed before the trap was pulled. The last execution was that of Eric Edgar Cooke, on 26 October 1964. Cooke had been convicted on only one count of murder but evidence and his confession suggest he had committed many, many more, including those for which other people had already been convicted.

Of course, even when the correct person is convicted of a serious offence the death penalty is abhorrent, for the many reasons that have been spoken of in this place. I noted in a speech on 22 February 2010:

The death penalty is an act that decreases the store of human dignity. It is a practice that has no social justification, for all the evidence indicates that it does not function as a deterrent, and ... it is not right that our system of justice function as an instrument of vengeance.

I was speaking on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Torture Prohibition and Death Penalty Abolition) Bill. It was a matter of great pride for me and many other Australians when the federal parliament passed this law last year with multipartisan support, making it impossible for the death penalty to be reintroduced at the state and territory level.

Of course this was an incorporation, into domestic law, of our international legal obligations under the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aimed at the abolition of the death penalty. When speaking on that bill I also referred to Indonesia and acknowledged that it takes very seriously offences involving drugs and wishes to ensure that a strong message is sent to the community that dealing in drugs will not be tolerated. I noted that it is possible to be tough on crime and drugs without imposing the death penalty, which is a fundamental violation of the right to life. This is demonstrated by the fact that the international criminal tribunals which try and punish the most serious crimes possible—genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity—do not have the death penalty. The arrest of General Ratko Mladic by Serbian authorities last Thursday will enable justice to finally be done for the atrocities committed in Sarajevo and Srebrenica. Yet whatever his fate within the judicial process, Mr Mladic will not receive a death sentence. And that is appropriate. As US Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once said:

The state does not honour the victim by emulating his murderer.

I made a statement last week welcoming the Indonesian Supreme Court's decision to overturn Scott Rush's death sentence, in which I noted the important progress made by Indonesia in strengthening democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law in the past decade. As noted in Amnesty International's report on Death sentences and executions 2010, the trend throughout the world is for increased abolition of the death penalty in practice or in law. It is, however, shocking that only last year China executed thousands of people for a wide range of crimes that included non-violent offences, and after proceedings that did not meet international fair trial standards. This is a matter that I trust is traversed in Australia's regular human rights dialogue with China.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Amnesty International on its 50th anniversary and for the incredible work it does to advance the cause of human rights throughout the world. I also want to thank and pay tribute to the member for Banks for bringing this important motion regarding the death penalty to the parliament and to thank all of the members who are speaking in support of this motion.

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