Our jelly backed PM

Kevin Rudd is receiving plaudits both in Australia and overseas for his deft and decisive handling his country’s response to the global financial meltdown. But when it comes to his position on the death penalty for the three Bali bombers, Mr Rudd, is so far at least, looking decidedly unprincipled.

The Bali bombers, Amrozi bin Nurhasyim, Ali Ghufron, and Imam Samudra are likely to be executed sometime within the next fortnight for their role in the terrorist attacks in Bali in 2003 which killed 88 Australians.

Mr Rudd has, in the not too distant past, said that the death penalty is wrong - always and everywhere. In journalist Robert Macklin’s 2007 biography of Rudd, the Prime Minister says:

I believe the death penalty is repugnant at every level and we have a responsibility not just to speak out against it, when it applies to Australians, but to argue, uncompromisingly, that the time has come for the world to put an end to this medieval practice.

And a year earlier, in an essay on the need for morality in politics, published in a national magazine, The Monthly, which Rudd used to cleverly position himself as a conviction politician, he wrote that “capital punishment is unacceptable in all circumstances and in all jurisdictions”.

These are not statements which allow for any ambiguity or equivocation. But did Mr Rudd really mean them, or where they said with a calculating eye to political ambition?

Is it just another case where a politician backslides from a principled moral position because political considerations demand he do so?

Mr Rudd appears now to be saying that he is only opposed to the death penalty in Australia, but that if other countries have it on their statute books as a legitimate form of punishment then that’s OK by him. This is how he is justifying comments he made earlier this month that the Bali bombers deserve the death penalty.

On October 3 Mr Rudd had this perplexing exchange with 4BC’s Greg Cary:

CARY: OK. Just perhaps in a sentence then because there is not a lot of time and only one or two points to make - what is your fundamental, philosophical problem with the death penalty?

PM: Oh, I take the underlying view that when it comes to the death penalty, in this country, (my emphasis) I have never accepted the argument that it represents a sufficient deterrent of itself. And secondly, the argument that killing another person doesn’t bring back the person to life that they have already killed themselves.

So, if I was persuaded of the deterrent arguments or the other arguments, then I would have a different view. But I have never had a persuasive argument put to me on that score and that has been my consistent position throughout my life.

Mr Rudd is looking jelly backed on the matter of the death penalty. His moral conviction has been put to the test and he has buckled.

Mr Rudd has an opportunity to return to his original position and for good reason, says Julian McMahon, a prominent Melbourne barrister who acts for two of the Bali Nine and acted for Melbourne man Van Nguyen who was executed in Singapore in 2005.

In a speech delivered last Friday at the Australian Lawyer’s Alliance Conference in Auckland, Mr McMahon observed that by “executing the Bali bombers we are giving them what they want - martyrdom, glory and hero-status. Instead, the better deterrent, the more effective punishment, the thing they don’t want, is life imprisonment.”

And if Mr Rudd was to oppose the death penalty for the Bali bombers he would win respect in our region, Mr McMahon said.

There is much to be said for this view. By opposing the death penalty for the Bali bombers and therefore signaling that they should not be turned into martyrs but forced to serve out a lifetime deprived of liberty, Mr Rudd would not only be better respecting the families and loved ones of the Bali victims, but would also demonstrate that Australia is prepared to take a leadership role on improving human rights in the Asia-Pacific region.