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The Death Penalty: Where is the Moral Leadership?

Malcolm Fraser

It is sad to see principle being thrown overboard and an expedient argument, which politicians believe will be the popular argument, pursued. So often matters of principle need to be explained and supported by those in positions of authority – and then, more often than not, those principles will find general support.

Recent events, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the 2002 Bali bombings, indicate that lack of principles is something that the leaders of the government and the opposition have in common.

When Labor’s shadow minister for Foreign Affairs, Robert McClelland, reiterated his party’s policy of universal abolition of the death penalty (“Labor’s policy, like the Government’s, universally opposes the death penalty in all circumstances,” Kevin Rudd, 6 September 2007) and criticised John Howard for supporting the executions of terrorists, Kevin Rudd quickly issued a public reprimand.

We know the Prime Minister was late in coming to condemn the death penalty within Australia. It must have seemed to be the expedient thing to do in a climate where more and more people were opposed to the death penalty as a matter of principle, believing that taking another human being’s life, even under cover of the law, was ethically wrong.

Then it was after the first Bali bombing that the government made it clear, regardless of Australia’s formal position, that the death penalty was acceptable so far as terrorists were concerned. When one of the bombers was sentenced to death by an Indonesian court in August 2003, the Prime Minister said:

“I am not supporting the reintroduction, I mean my position, let me repeat, is for reasons of pragmatic concern that the law from time to time will make mistakes, I am against the death penalty. That is the basis, always has been the basis of my objection. But I respect the fact that a lot of people are in favour of the death penalty, a lot of people who are close to me are in favour of the death penalty. It’s just that different people have different views.”

After all, terrorists set about killing innocent people, bystanders in a war that is a clash of ideologies.

Certainly terrorism, violence directed at innocent civilians, is totally unacceptable and must be condemned. We have to strive for a world in which terrorism is no longer practised. But we need to be conscious that terrorism in one form or another is as old as the human race. You can reach back into the past to the Spanish Inquisition or even further, to the Normans when they first invaded Britain. The Normans wanted a compliant, civil society, easily achieved by murdering women and children at the first villages they came to. You can go to the Battle of Culloden and to the activities of the Duke of Cumberland in the aftermath of that conflict.

Closer to our own time, there are the Basques in Spain, the Red Brigade and Red Army in Germany and Italy, the IRA and indeed to the Protestant militias in Ireland.

We should not think that terrorism is new. It may be in a different form but the idea of killing innocent people as a weapon of war or as a weapon of punishment, is not new.

Why then do both the Government and the Opposition single out terrorism, as though it is a new phenomenon, and say yes, they are opposed to the death penalty but, all the same, they can accept the death penalty for terrorists? Are these terrorists worse than other people who undertake cruel and inhumane acts against innocent people?

Rwanda, despite the genocide, despite the brutality and the murder of hundreds of thousands of people who, in any standard would have had to be regarded as innocent, has recently abolished the death penalty. As a matter of principle they do not believe in the death penalty as an instrument of punishment – as our Government and Opposition (but not Mr McClelland) clearly do.

Let’s take the argument a little further. We have heard a great deal recently about sexual abuse and paedophilia. If a habitual paedophile happens to murder five or ten of his victims, by any standards innocent victims, do we believe in the death penalty for him? If we do not, how is it that he is not as evil as terrorists involved in the Bali or London bombings? And what about a rapist who happens to rape old women has and killed two or three along the way, in the evening of their lives. Is he not as evil as the terrorists?

If there is a principle, how do you make a distinction? How do Mr Howard and Mr Rudd support the abolition of the death penalty within Australia for such crimes and then say the death penalty for terrorists is an acceptable form of punishment?

Such a matter is either a principle or it is not. If it is a matter of practice (or pragmatism as the prime minister would have it), then each case becomes a matter of judgment and then the death penalty would assuredly be reintroduced into Australia for crimes where innocent people are grievously or mortally injured.

But if it is a matter of principle, if we oppose the death penalty because we believe we should not take the life of another human being, no matter what that person has done and even if it is sanction by the state, the principle must be inviolate and apply to everyone.

What the government has demonstrated is that it has no principle if, as a matter of practice it is prepared to support the death penalty for people whom they believe everyone in Australia would condemn.

Mr McClelland was brave enough, or foolish enough, to speak about principle. If one is opposed to the death penalty on a matter of principle, one has to be opposed to the death penalty in all cases. But Kevin Rudd had his eye on the politics and clearly did not want a debate in which he would be accused of being soft on terrorism. So he corrects Mr McClelland and says Australia should do nothing to oppose the death penalty in Indonesia.

I actually believe that Australia should campaign with other like-minded countries to oppose the death penalty as a matter of punishment in all cases.

It is sad to see principle being thrown overboard and an expedient argument, which politicians believe will be the popular argument, pursued. So often matters of principle need to be explained and supported by those in positions of authority – and then, more often than not, those principles will find general support.

To find that the Government and the Opposition are united in destroying principle and embracing expediency does not augur well for the future of Australian politics.