No change this week on the Essential Research fortnightly rolling average, which has the Coalition, Labor, the Greens and Palmer United steady on 40%, 41%, 9% and 2%, with Labor’s two-party preferred lead at 53-47. Further questions relate to terrorism, and they offer rare good news for Tony Abbott, whose handling of the threat has 46% approval and 33% disapproval. It would also be to his advantage that fully 75% of respondents believe the threat has increased over the last few years, with only 2% opting for decreased, and that considerably more respondents think the government should be spending more on anti-terrorism measures (39%) than less (12%), with 56% favouring more restrictions versus only 28% who believe current laws strike the right balance. Less good for the government is the finding that 34% approve of the Human Rights Commission’s performance versus only 22% disapproval, although 44% allowed that they didn’t know. Another interesting finding is that 48% would support a national ban on greyhound racing, with only 26% opposed. The poll also finds that 57% take a favourable view of multiculturalism versus 29% for negative, and that 67% think racism is a problem in Australia.
Government approves $1.4b takeover of Primo by Brazilian company
phew lucky they’re stopping that 59 mil mansion sale
@ Puff, 800
Absolutely not. There is a big difference between something generally recognised to legitimately be a crime in need of punishment (drug trafficking) and something that doesn’t even exist (witchcraft) and is just used to get rid of people that other people don’t like.
Ditto for people being executed for adultery, premarital sex and the like.
AS
Maybe not if their families had a few mill they could lay their hands on, if one judges words can be be trusted.
If you are saying human rights stop at a line drawn on a map, and it is none of our business, then fine. Withdraw our troops from everywhere, recall every rep we have on every committee anywhere that seeks to change things for anyone not living within our lines on the globe. Let’s all just shut up, go home, and feel good about respecting whatever the hell sovereignty is. And I have no problem with other countries telling us to get our act together regarding aboriginal people and asylum seekers.
@ Puff, 803
Please read the post you’re responding to before responding to it. I said if the corruption didn’t exist, they would be in the same situation as they were now – they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to pay a bribe to get off.
It’s a balancing act. Obviously, people (no matter where they live) have a right to not be executed for arbitrary “offenses” like witchcraft/sorcery, adultery and apostasy. I’m less convinced that people have an inherent right to not be executed for drug trafficking, child abuse, rape and murder.
AS
So it is about the drug trafficking for you?
[There is a big difference between something generally recognised to legitimately be a crime in need of punishment drug trafficking ]
AS
and
[There is a big difference between something generally recognised to legitimately be a crime in need of punishment -drug trafficking ]
is a very debatable statement.
While I agree Abbott made it difficult, the Indonesians could still manufacture an excuse for clemency. Instead they are putting on a show, with guys dressed like they are in a computer game and fighter jet escorts et al.
Sure the Indonesians have the right to their own laws, but for those of us who can imagine what it would be like to be the subject of such “whimsy” it is sickening, and can’t be excused by some relativism about the Dutch, or whatever.
@ Puff, 805
Yes. As I pointed out in an earlier response to you, the notion that context is irrelevant when it comes to the death penalty is one that I very much disagree with.
Stepping away from capital punishment for a moment, let’s suppose we’re talking about life imprisonment. Would it be inconsistent of me to support life imprisonment for murder but oppose it for adultery?
@ Question, 807
People are very much free to not travel to countries whose justice systems they are in disagreement with.
[While I agree Abbott made it difficult, the Indonesians could still manufacture an excuse for clemency.]
Widodo never intended to exercise clemency. In fact, he has done everything possible to make it difficult for himself to do so if he were so inclined. The brutal fact is that Widodo is executing these two men – and the others on death row – for populist reasons. Executions may be permitted under Indonesian law, but these official murders will do nothing to lessen the drug trade in Indonesia. It is purely Widodo’s version of Abbott’s 8 flags – strutting his stuff to show he is a tough guy.
The only legitimate reason to execute child abusers and rapists is to remove from society people who will almost certainly do those actions continually all their lives. The same can be achieved much cheaper by lifetime incarceration.
Most murderers do so only once, unless they are serial killers. So that is no reason to execute them. Drink drivers are highly likely to reoffend and put people at risk of lifelong harm or death, so could we add them to the rapists and child molesters as a threat to people?
Who else should we remove? Racists can cause extreme harm, and usually remain racists all their lives. Should add the DP to 18c?
If a group of people form a society with their own rules that they all understand and have agreed upon, uncoerced, then I support their right to impose those rules on themselves, with their own consent, even if that includes burning each other alive.
If someone changes their mind and wants to leave the group, they must be allowed to, and they must be given the opportunity to do so before any irreversible rule is enforced.
However the planet we live on is too small and too crowded with no room to move and I seriously doubt any nation on Earth meets the criteria stated above, so, in practice, on Earth, I support being intefering busybodies. But we should be clever interfering busybodies, not stupid.
AS
Your 808 makes no sense to me.
Agreed TPOF,
Said something similar myself on PB this mourning.
Very good point Puff,
Much easier to have a guiding principle such as “killing is wrong” (not to mention torture). After all, if the State can decide it’s OK to kill someone then why can’t anyone?
Z
The argument about rehabilitation is relevant in this case as Widodo is meant to take that into consideration in deciding on clemency.
Even under the non-existent system I’ve so described, I reserve the right to call people names like “barbarian” and “uncivilised” for coming up with rules that I don’t approve of.
@ Puff, 811
I’m not convinced of this. The only data I’ve seen on the subject has been from the USA, whose legal system is notoriously expensive and is, as such, a poor example.
Lifetime incarceration also raises the continuous expense of keeping that convicted criminal fed, watered, clothed and healthy for the rest of their life (which, if they’re a young offender, could be half a century or more) – better treatment than we give to our pensioners, disabled, homeless and unemployed. On top of that, the victims (or families of the victims) are paying taxes to support this – I would find that personally offensive were I in that position.
At the very minimum, I think people who are in prison should be put to hard labor – and any profits made should be sent to their victims or their families.
@ Puff, 813
What part of it don’t you understand?
If a country decides to have the death penalty as a legal punishment, then that country, i.e. whomever runs it, has to decide what crimes makes someone a person to be killed by the state.
And there the strife begins.
What actions? Murder, rape, treason, being a low level drug trafficker, homosexuality, belonging to a proscribed group, walking across the Kings grass?
And the persons attributes: Race, class, gender, age, nationality, disability, physical appearance, access to bribe money, ability to talk in the language, access to powerful people
Then there is the politics, the differences in policing for different groups, what is a crime for one group is a recreation for another (eg drugs and class rankings}
Yes, it is a long road down “the DP is their law and so be it” hill. I generally find such a statement to be masking something else, if only an excuse for indifference.
@ Question, 814
There’s a reason the State has the monopoly on violence.
Question @807:
Given Indonesia’s philosophical agreement with the idea of the death penalty for the Bali Nines’ crime – why would they do this?
I mean, it’s self-evident that the government agrees with the sentence, or else there’d have been a pardon/commutation already. And the Abbott Government hasn’t been going out of its way to give Widodo reasons to stick his political neck out because we ask him to.
So why would they do so? Commuting the sentence doesn’t serve their principles, nor does it give them any material or political benefits. In fact, with all the hoo-haw going on, it’d be a huge political risk for Widodo to delay or commute the sentences at all, now.
@ Puff, 819
None of these should have any impact on the judgement meted out – and the absence of any such corruption would not have changed the position Chan and Sukumuran are in, because at the very basic level of the Indonesian legal code, they committed a capital offense.
I absolutely deplore the corruption in their system, but let’s not pretend that it is because of corruption that Chan and Sukumuran face the death penalty.
AS
I am interested in systems that involve restitution to victims of crime by the labour of the perpetrator, as long as we do not end up with the virtually slave labour force in USA prisons.
Killing someone to save money sounds a bit crass.
AS,
Opposing the death penalty is a fairly simple and absolute belief.
Your support of the death penalty is relativist, and goes into all sorts of rabbit holes about levels of crime and costs of prison that would be impossible for everyone to agree on.
I am only guessing, but the money the Indonesians just spent on the prison transfer parade could have kept quite a few people in prison for a very long time.
While I don’t agree with ESJ I do think it’s time for West Papua Independence.
West Papuans are not asians, they are not muslims and they certainly aren’t Indonesians.
We’ve been playing nicely nicely with Indo on it like we did East Timor but I think it’s time we spoke up.
[None of these should have any impact on the judgement meted out]
Except it does. Every single time.
Matt I agree, they are doing it for political reasons. I would hate to be killed for such reasons.
@ Question, 824
For me, it is not an issue of black and white, there are shades of grey in the middle.
@ Puff, 826
And as I’ve said repeatedly, I absolutely support moves to condemn and eliminate corruption in the legal system. However, it is a separate issue to the fact that Indonesia’s legal code sets drug trafficking as a capital offense. Were Indonesia’s system free of corruption, Chan and Sukumuran would still be facing a firing squad – it is in fact possible that they would already have been executed.
TBA
There are not going to be any West Papuans. We might as well start collecting their artifacts for our museums because that part of that island is going to be 100% Indonesian one day. Like this case of the death penalty there is not a blessed thing we can do to stop it.
Anyway I am off to bed. And one more night gone of the few those ten people have left to them. I wonder if they are allowed to watch the sunrises and sunsets? I suppose not. It is what I would want.
[For me, it is not an issue of black and white, there are shades of grey in the middle.]
I can see that, and on this issue I find non-religious comfort in the simple concept that “thou shall not kill”. 🙂
Question @827:
No, they’re being killed because they committed capital offenses. Well-publicized capital offenses, at that, in a jurisdiction notorious for its lack of leniency in such matters.
The Indonesian Government isn’t taking steps to spare them because we haven’t given them any reasons to cheapen their own laws, face a heavy domestic political backlash and generally say “OK, fine – you’ve been a bad boy, now go home”.
Because when your citizens have been sentenced to death for crimes they committed in another nation, for the government of that nation to spare them is a favour – and they’re not doing any favours for Abbott. I wonder why?
AS
All your argument hinges on the fact that some men got together, scribbled a bit of writing down that said killing is okay for some people and said they were all happy with that. According to you that is the end of it.
Therein we disagree, and always shall.
[Arrnea Stormbringer
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 11:00 pm | Permalink
@ Barney in Saigon, 781
However, I must disagree with you on this point:
This is unacceptable. If a crime is committed in Australia it should be dealt with in Australia.
The crime was being committed in Indonesia – possession of drugs in this quantity with the intent to traffic is the operative offence here.
]
If they’re looking to import to Australia I see no problem withholding the information and arresting them when they return, or in the case of importing to another country, which does not have capital punishment, pass the information to them.
The situation I was referring to in the quoted passage is when drugs are being trafficked from Australia to another jurisdiction.
There are cases where AFP has been advised of an offence and for some reason allowed the offenders to travel and then passed this information on to other jurisdictions resulting in an arrest.
Exporting drugs from Australia is as much a crime as importing them into another country.
http://australianpolitics.com/2003/03/13/john-howard-iraq-speech-npc.html
check out all those hacks who were still around a decade later to not question Tones about the viability of his signature PPL scheme
@ Puff, 832
If you want to go to that level, all justice is arbitrary, because all of it is reliant on the fact that some people got together and scribbled down a bit of writing that said certain acts were to be subject to punishment and others were not.
Puff @832:
[All your argument hinges on the fact that some men got together, scribbled a bit of writing down that said killing is okay for some people and said they were all happy with that. According to you that is the end of it.
Therein we disagree, and always shall.]
If that’s your philosophy, why pay taxes? Why adhere to the ins and outs of regulatory regimes? Why have a government at all?
In the final analysis, government – by your own terms – is only some men getting together and scribbling down some writing that says doing this is OK, and doing that is not OK.
@ Matt, 836
The more I read Puff, the more I am convinced there’s an anarcho-primitivist just waiting to be unleashed under their skin.
Barney
[If they’re looking to import to Australia I see no problem withholding the information and arresting them when they return]
Yep.
The more I read Matt and Arenea the more I am amazed there can be the same backer upperer just happening along to back up something
AS
I invite you to Amnesty International’s bed page,
https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/death-penalty/
web page
@ paaptsef, 839
Given that you don’t appear to have mastered copy and paste, it is not so surprising that you’d find the existence of people who agree with each other often to be unusual.
Re The nest US president
_________________
A US source looks at the negative factors which will prevail against a linton candidacy,and says she couldn’t win and would be a bad choice anyway
http://www.moonofalabama.org/
if/when the bali nine leaders are executed, will abbott:
a. beat the xenophobic drum further – e.g. suggesting australians don’t visit bali or indonesia; say he’ll review aid; urge ‘peaceful protest in the australian way'(& somehow imply this means ‘non-muslim’ – e.g. ‘unlike the death cult and their fellow travelers’ ); etc.
b. blame labor (‘they sat on their hands for six years, madame speaker, six years, for six years madame speaker…..blah blah blag’)
c. both a and b
(answer = ‘c’)
the real question is, will the rednecks buy it? my charming bogan-in-laws/howard battlers all think they deserve to be shot and/or ‘are over it’, but will probably ‘think’ whatever the herald sun and neil mitchell tells them they should.
[Re The nest US president
_________________
A US source looks at the negative factors which will prevail against a linton candidacy,and says she couldn’t win and would be a bad choice anyway]
He we go — Clinton is probably part of some vast Jewish-Israeli-Zionist neoliberal anti-Putin plot in Deb’s mad world!
Lay off the sauce, Deb!
Daily Nett_NEWS++™ by @Otiose94 http://bit.ly/1BEAK4C #auspol http://bit.ly/1nAtjp1 oㄥO
#Iraq, #abbott Pandora’s Box by @davpope © http://bit.ly/1B6OsNL
I agree with everything stated here by Puff.
Furthermore, I have to say I have no respect for politicians, such as Widodo, who simply play a game with life, with the lives of the powerless.
There was some video broadcast this week in which he was asking – really, he was rehearsing – an assembly of school kids on the issue. He was shown asking “Should drug smugglers be given leniency?” and grinning when, in emphatic unison, they gave him the “No!!” he wanted.
His face glowed with happiness at the thought of serving death, it seemed. He looked like a choir master, smirking horribly, eyes twinkling with pleasure. What a disgrace. He has commissioned a room full of teenagers to affirm multiple killings. This is planning to kill for amusement, for self-gratification, for laughs. Widodo uses death to pleasure himself. He is utterly contemptible.
[721
rossmcg
Posted Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at 10:09 pm | PERMALINK
Shellbell
Who was the Mr Kirk representing?]
Icac
New thread.