Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1) notes:

(a) the execution in Indonesia by firing squad on 29 April 2015 of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, along with their fellow prisoners, Rodrigo Gularte, Silvester Nwolise, Okwuduli Oyatanze, Raheem Salami, Martin Anderson and Zainal Abidin, and expresses condolences to their families;

(b) the bipartisan commitment in Australia to see an end to the death penalty worldwide;

(c) that the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the death penalty is not a more effective deterrent than long term imprisonment;

(d) that the international trend is clearly away from the practice of the death penalty—in 1977 only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty, now 140 nations have banned the practice; and

(e) that Australia has the opportunity to influence further progress towards the worldwide abolition of the death penalty in its relationship with key regional and global partners; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) strengthen its efforts to advocate for an end to the death penalty wherever it still occurs; and

(b) ensure that Australia's international cooperation is structured to avoid to the extent possible, the potential that such cooperation could lead to a person receiving the death penalty.

It was gut-wrenching to have to take down the poster in my office window that said ' Keep H ope A live ' after the execution on 29 April of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran , along with their six fellow prisoners. Today I begin by offering my condolences to the families of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. I acknowledge that both men , having committed serious crimes , responded to their incarceration by showing remorse and by committing themselves to penance and rehabilitation, including through the assistance and comfort they gave to other prisoners in Indonesia. They showed the capacity that we all have to acknowledge fault and to make amends — a capacity that has its twin in the extension of forgiveness and mercy.

But today I also want to talk about the death penalty more broadly and I want to make the point that when you accept that the death penalty is wrong as a matter of principle you accept that the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances. On that basis the execution of Andrew and Myuran was not made wrong because of their rehabilitation or their work to assist fellow prisoners , it was not made wrong by Andrew's faith or Myuran's art — it was wrong because the death penalty is intrinsically wrong.

While o ur position on the death penalty in Australia is clear, it is important to recognise that as a nation we have a considerable prior history of applying that sentence in our laws. The death penalty remained a valid punishment in Western Australia until 1984, just 31 years ago. And there is evidence to suggest that a significant number of Australians do n o t necessarily regard the death penalty as a bad thing in some cases and in some countries. That is a challenge for those of us who believe that it is plainly and categorically wrong for the state to put a person to death. Such an act says that there are circumstances in which a person forfeits their life . If we sanction such a view in our laws, how can we say that is not a judgement that anyone could then make about another person?

The death penalty says that society is no better than the brutal response of 'an eye for an eye'. It says there is no such thing as redemption or rehabilitation. It says that our justice systems are infallible. All these statements are wrong—and so the death penalty is wrong.

The focus in Australia on the recent executions in Indonesia was an opportunity to remember that the fundamental inhumanity of putting a person to death continues to be overlooked by the governments of several countries with which we have close and important relations. The United States, for example, last year was fifth on the list of nations carrying out executions; the other countries in the top five were China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. I agree with the community sentiment—and with the government's approach to this issue—that says our bilateral relationship with any country will be affected by their practice of the death penalty, even when they are our friends, as Indonesia is and as are China and the United States. I commend the campaign launched last week by eight human rights organisations in Australia, including Amnesty International, called 'Australian government and the death penalty: a way forward'.

Finally, I note that all those executed in Indonesia were put to death for drug offences—and it is past time that we had a wide-ranging discussion in Australia about the way in which the criminalisation of drug use and addiction in fact creates the worst criminal aspects of drug trafficking. If drug addiction was treated as a health issue rather than as criminal behaviour, would we still have the profiteering, drug-pushing, violence and property crime; would we still have prisons full of people who are often sick and disadvantaged, and who through prison are often further alienated from the possibility of education and employment and further entrenched in a cycle of need, powerlessness and self-destruction? Human society, at its best, is capable of the most amazing good things. As individuals we run the full spectrum from saints to monsters and everything in between, but together we can identify and hold on to our best collective values, enshrine them in our laws, enable them to permeate throughout our culture as we make progress towards our better nature. In this vein I would like to conclude with some words written by Sarah Gill from UWA, published on Crikey:

… the final terrible weeks of Chan and Sukumaran [remind] us that freedom—and courage—comes in many different forms.

Incarcerated on the prison island of Nusakambangan, increasingly cut off from family, friends and the world at large, denied the freedom to speak, to argue their case, and denied, at the end, their very lives, the pair distilled their choices down to this: to love, to paint, to hope, to be generous, to embrace, to stand tall, to sing.

As for the rest of us, we'll probably continue to take our freedoms for granted. But while we might not agree on how to value a person's worth, we can be infinitely grateful we're free to decide, for ourselves, those we admire. For me, I'll be remembering the words of Nelson Mandela—'a saint is a sinner who keeps on trying'—and thinking of two Sydney boys who chose, under the worst of circumstances, to be the best of what remained to them.

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