Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The government’s consistent approach has been that complex international relations matters should not be dealt with by means of a formal motion. It is also the government’s view that it is counterproductive for motions of this kind to single out any one country when Australia’s opposition to the death penalty is universal. According to the most recent available Amnesty International figures released in 2009 and in 2008, at least 2,390 people were known to have been executed in 25 countries and at least 8,864 people were sentenced to death in 52 countries around the world.

The Australian government’s policy on the death penalty is clear and consistent. Australian acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 2 October 1990. In keeping with the government’s policy of encouraging universal ratification of the second optional protocol, we call on all countries to abolish the death penalty. Australia advances our universal opposition to the death penalty through the United Nations, including advocating for the death penalty’s abolition. We have consistently called for the abolition of the death penalty during interventions in the course of the Human Rights Council’s universal periodic review and we encourage the abolition of the death penalty in our bilateral human rights dialogues with China, Vietnam and Laos.

Australia, through its overseas missions, is currently making global representations against the death penalty to all countries that carry out executions or maintain capital punishment as part of their law. I want to say clearly and categorically and without question that the government is committed to working with the international community to achieve the death penalty’s universal abolition.