Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too thank the member for Banks for bringing this motion before us this evening. Everyone who has participated in this debate so far has spoken on other occasions that I can recall on the issue of the death penalty. Capital punishment, the death penalty, is the most cruel, inhumane and irreversible form of punishment that there can be. It is an absolute affront to those of us who stand for human rights.

In 1977, when Amnesty International started its campaign against the death penalty, there were, as I understand it, only 16 abolitionist countries. Now, little more than 30 years later, 139 countries are abolitionist. In the last 10 years alone, more than 30 countries have abolished laws or practices with respect to the death penalty. I applaud everybody who has been involved in that and I congratulate those countries for taking a responsible position on human rights.

My involvement in the issue of capital punishment started almost five years ago, not long after my by-election, when I had a chance encounter, meeting with the parents of Scott Rush. Scott Rush is one of the Bali Nine. He was arrested at Denpasar airport carrying a large quantity of drugs. He was a drug mule; there is no doubt about it. His father had tipped off the Federal Police about what his son was up to in an attempt to stop his son's life of crime. What his father did not understand, of course, was that if you got caught overseas, particularly in Bali, it would mean the death sentence. Together with Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, Scott was, until very recently, on death row at Kerobokan Prison.

As a matter of fact, about five or six weeks ago my wife, Bernadette, and I went to Kerobokan Prison to see all the Australian prisoners on death row. I have to say that as a parent it struck me that, but for the grace of God, it could have been any of our kids over there—and they were kids. Scott Rush was 17 when he was apprehended carrying his quantity of drugs. Certainly it was misguided and certainly it was criminal activity, but at the end of the day he is someone's child. Visiting the prison left me with all the feelings experienced by a parent in this circumstance. I would not like to have to leave my child in Kerobokan Prison waiting for a final verdict to be made.

Fortunately for Scott Rush, his final judicial review was handed down a couple of weeks ago. By a majority vote by the bench of two to one his execution was commuted to life imprisonment. Sukumaran and Chan are still waiting for judgment to be made in respect of their judicial review. I felt I shared a common bond with Lee and Christine Rush: the unreserved love that we have for our kids regardless of what they have done. Since our visit, Scott has fortunately had his sentence commuted. I hope and pray that that occurs for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan as well.

I am proud of the fact that, in this country, Gough Whitlam in 1973 took the steps federally to abolish the death penalty. In 1990 Australia signed the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Australia voted in the United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for a global moratorium on the death penalty in 2007. Australia co-sponsors the resolution for human rights and calls for all nations to abolish capital punishment.

As time is rapidly running out, I would like to leave you with the words of Chief Justice of the Constitution Court in South Africa, Ismael Mahomed. He said that the death penalty:

… is the ultimate and the most incomparably extreme form of punishment … It is the last, the most devastating and the most irreversible recourse of the criminal law involving … the planned and calculated termination of life itself; the destruction of the greatest and most precious gift which is bestowed on all humankind.

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