Deputy Labor leader joins Julie Bishop in heartfelt speeches urging Indonesia to spare Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran
The deputy Labor leader, Tanya Plibersek, has spoken of her husband’s drug conviction and the death of her brother in Papua New Guinea as she urged Indonesia to spare the lives of two Australian men on death row in Bali.
The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, also gave a heartfelt speech as she moved a motion in the House of Representatives opposing capital punishment for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle heroin from Bali in 2005.
“Our shared hope is that the Indonesian government and its people will show mercy to Andrew and Myuran,” Bishop said. “Both men are deeply, sincerely remorseful for their actions. Both men have made extraordinary efforts to rehabilitate.
Plibersek offered deeply personal reasons for sparing the two men’s lives.
“In 1988, my husband left prison after being charged and convicted of a similar crime to these young men,” Plibersek said. She is married to the senior NSW public servant Michael Coutts-Trotter.
“I imagine what would have happened if he had been caught in Thailand instead of in Australia where that crime was committed, where he was coming back to Australia. I think about – I didn’t know him at the time, this is 30 years ago – what would the world have missed out on?” Plibersek said.
“They would have missed out on the three beautiful children we have had together. They would have missed out on a man who spent the rest of his life making amends for the crime that he committed.”
She said punishment should not be meted out by those affected by crimes.
“In 1997, I lost my brother to a violent crime in Port Moresby. I know that if I had been the one making the decision about the punishment of the person who did that crime, I couldn’t have thought of a punishment bad enough.
“That’s why we don’t make decisions about punishment on the basis of how we feel but on the basis of universal, consistently-applied rules.”
She said Labor stood with the government in its efforts to spare Chan and Sukumaran’s life.
“There has been for many years in Australia a bipartisan rejection of the death penalty.”
Bishop said it was Indonesia that would lose most from executing the pair.
