Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with my colleagues in calling for the lives of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan to be spared. Both are right now on death row in Kerobokan Prison, awaiting execution. Both were arrested in 2005 and convicted in 2006. Their final appeal to the Indonesian Supreme Court in 2011 failed, and I understand that a recent appeal to President Joko Widodo also failed, although I also understand that they have now lodged an appeal against that failure.

As we heard earlier, there have been candlelight vigils held in Australia calling for their lives to be spared and praying for them, and I understand there is another one tonight, according to the member for Cunningham. I do not in any way want to trivialise or minimise the gravity of their offences or to criticise the Indonesian justice system, but I do not support the death penalty and I have argued against it in this place in the past. And I do note that most other countries around the world have also now abolished it. There would seem to me to be other forms of punishment that would be appropriate for the crimes that have been committed. It is my view that the death sentence will not only end the lives of the two men concerned but it will also destroy the lives of their family members, who have also suffered so much in this ordeal.