ONCE YOU'RE DEAD, YOU'RE DEAD!

Well, as the Herald Sun so adequetly described the situation with the Bali Bombers on its website on Sunday morning. It had the headline...

'It's Done'

Indeed it was. At 12.15am Java time last Sunday morning the three convicted Bali Bombers were shot in the heart and killed for their horrific crimes. These three terrorists are now dead but the mess over Australia's attitude to capital punishment lingers. And neither the media nor the government are doing anything to help the situation.

Firstly, let's start off with a selection of the public commentary reported in some of the media....

- They should have been given the death penalty.... The didn't deserve it! They should have been made to sit in a dark cell and rot away.

- Bastards, they get what they deserved. Now let them burn in hell.

- Its my belief that those three bastards showed not an inkling of remorse for the hundreds of innocent people they killed, as well as the hundreds more that were devastated by the deaths. So why should others show the same respects for them?

- Islam never encourage killing innocent people .What Bali bombers did was totally unacceptaple and they got what they deserve .

- Hopefully the survivors of the bombings get closure from this. May they rot in hell after the sins they have committed.

- Why are we still talking about these people?

- Is it now possible to just forget these animals. No media attention please!

So much for that very small selection of a range of the public commentary. Of course, mostly written in anonymity. But so much for the public comment. Check out the spin from our political leaders..... It's a confusing situation because there is an apparent bi-partisan approach in Australia against the death penalty around the world. And with three members of the Bali Nine not too far away from the firing squad themselves we will soon see the rhetoric ramped up to try and save these three from the same fate as the Bali Bombers. Is the government against the death penalty in relation to the crimes of the Bali Nine? Do we have the right to interfere in another sovereign country's affairs?

So the Australian government will plead for clemency for the members of the Bali Nine. At other times both parties have claimed that they are against capital punishment in any circumstance and have indicated their will to campaign for a blanket moratorium in all countries where the death penalty is still applied.

But hang on. You can't be half pregnant. In the same way you can't be half dead. If Australia's government believes that we should actively campaign against capital punishment around the world then where was their pleas to stop the execution of the Bali Bombers. Their crimes might be horrific but it's either one way or the other. How can you be against capital punishment in one case and turn a blind eye in another. Why is it one rule for one life and not another?

Greens leader, Bob Brown was quoted in the Murdoch press yesterday saying....

- “My view is that these murderers should have been kept in jail for the rest of their lives and never released. And of course there's the potential for some martyrdom effect, which would be counter-reactive.”

He also said....

- “I am with the government and opposition in saying the death penalty is never warranted"

But if it’s warranted for the Bali Bombers why not for everyone else convicted under the same law in an independent sovereign state. No one in either the dying days of the Howard Government or the new Rudd government has ever stood up and made the situation clear. Why? Cause it's just one huge mother of a hot political potato. Polls would suggest that the majority of Australians wanted the Bali Bombers executed. It was 74/26 in the HS poll yesterday and I guess that’s probably a reasonable reflection of the wider Australian community. But neither the opposition nor the government wants to tread on this one.

The other term I have heard over the past few days is 'closure'. It's been suggested that the families of the victims of these terrorist bombings will now have closure (that awful American term) and be able to move on with their lives. So do we have to kill every perpetrator of every crime to be able to achieve closure? Even worse, some media stories and commentators have suggested, like Bob Brown, that there could be reprisals and that the bombers could become martyrs for their cause. In that case we better not try and capture Osama Bin Laden, let alone try him and execute him. Surely, with this logic, we are better to leave him roaming around the back blocks of Afganistan rather than seek him out risking retribution and making him a martyr.

This is such an emotive issue and the one thing we probably need, more than anything else, is some consistent and rational leadership on the issue. How can our government plea for clemency for the three members of the Bali Nine currently on Death Row when they didn't plea for the lives of the Bali Bombers, or the Nigerian drug runners executed in Indonesia last July.... or anyone else sitting on death row around the world.

You're either for it or against, whether Australian or otherwise. Once you're dead, you're dead.