The response of the Left seems to be nothing but Racist and Culturalist hate mongering. What do they want seems to be a war where as usual the Left will sit and decry what real people would then have to do. Well NO WAR for LEFTY VANITY.

AN Ambassadorial response was proportionate, within precedent and effective.

McCackie, your hysterical content-free comment contrasts markedly with the article's measured tone and good sense.

I would be strongly supportive of the idea of a scholarship scheme. The sordid episode needs to be remembered.

The heartening reaction to the execution of Andrew Chan, Myurna Sukamaran and seven others in Indonesia, demonstrates Australians are capable of recognising right from wrong, without the opportunistic grandstanding of Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek. Certainly we heard from the Prime Minister, who is genuinely opposed to the death penalty, from the womb to the tomb, a position for which he has been vilified often by the same people who now lament Indonesia’s death penalty. Along his way to the top, Bill Shorten recanted his opposition to abortion and Tanya Plibersek is passionately committed to Australia's abortion toll. Where has she, as Tony Abbott has, ever lamented it ? Australia's recall of its ambassadors won't affect Indonesia, who knows that every year, Australia kills 100,000 of its own. Innocent unborn children. Just think, if we hadn’t been doing
this for decades, we might have some clout, as a just nation with a population they couldn’t dismiss. Instead of a nation lead by people who can’t recognise the ranks of their so called “pro choice” supporters are thinning and greying, while those opposed to all capital punishment, for the innocent and the guilty, are expanding and vibrant.

I say thank goodness the author is a "Retired" diplomat. The thought of this idiot being let out of Australia is worrying though.

Denny,

"... Certainly we heard from the Prime Minister, who is genuinely opposed to the death penalty, from the womb to the tomb, a position for which he has been vilified often by the same people who now lament Indonesia’s death penalty..."

Oh really?

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bali-9-executions-abbott-government-backflipped-on-afp-death-penalty-directive-20150429-1mwh1t.html

"The Abbott government quietly scrapped an instruction to the Australian Federal Police last year requiring it to take Australia's opposition to the death penalty into account when co-operating with overseas law enforcement agencies."

"In 2010, Labor's then minister for home affairs, Brendan O'Connor, included Australia's opposition to the death penalty in his official ministerial direction to the AFP.

The 2010 ministerial direction said the minister expected the AFP to "take account of the government's long-standing opposition to the application of the death penalty, in performing its international liaison functions".

This was the first time such an instruction had been included in a ministerial direction to the AFP.

In May 2014, Justice Minister Michael Keenan issued a new ministerial direction that removed the instruction. The 2014 ministerial direction includes no reference to the death penalty."

I am glad that the embarrasing media spectacle is over.

Australians with a convict complex, and Ned Kelly admirers, naively screeching for Abbott do 'do something for our boys'.

'Our boys" were drug smugglers and dealers in death before they were finally caught and dealt with once and for all. They were always going to be shot, they deserved to be shot, and Abbott and Bishop had no hope at all of interferring in their fate - ever.

The inevitable didn't stop Abbott and Bishop making idiots of themselves, however, and kidding themselves and naive Australians - giving the appearance that 'talking tough' to Indonesia would make a difference. I see Indonesia as a potential enemy of Australia, but good on them for ignoring our leading blabbermouths, who can't even run Australia, let alone other countries.

I hope that decent, level headed Australians will not be tainted by the ludicrous behaviour - aired world-wide - of the few jerks and idiots who failed to recognise that the two people they were trying to save were nasty criminals dealing in substances which have caused the deaths of who knows how many people.

There should be no sympathy for them. Keep the sympathy for the families who have been wrecked by the tragedy wreaked on them by these two rotten drug dealers.

Goodbye and good riddance. The ambassador will be redeployed to Indonesia when the fuss dies down in about 10 days, and perhaps - perhaps - our PM might start concentrating on law-abiding Australias.

If this articles author, & this pair of now eliminated criminals are representative of what Australia has become, it really is time to start looking for somewhere else to call home.

They were a perfect example of why we should stop all immigration immediately.

ttbn, they were drug smugglers and they were caught and they were eventually punished as the country they committed the crime in saw fit.

So what? That's now done and dusted and the family are the only ones who are still being punished.

Once the media circus of execution porn is finished, nobody else will remember what happened in a few years.

Haigh's idea of a scholarship is very good. It keeps alive the lesson of the terrible consequences of doing something stupid like they did and it gives some kids from the wrong side of the tracks who might otherwise fall into a similar wasteful fate some possibility of educating themselves to a better life.

Hasbeen, I can only say I'm envious of you for having never made a stupid decision that could have gone badly wrong. But gee, you must have had a boring life...

"couldabeen" might be a better handle than "hasbeen", perhaps?

Bruce Haigh - "There will be considerable public anger from both the left and the right, the former driven by concern for human rights and natural justice, the latter by racism, jingoism and twisted nationalism".

Come on Bruce just say it, those on the Left are the embodiment of Goodness and those on the Right are Evil personified.

"twisted nationalism" is like "bad evil" - a superfluous adjective.

Those who live in a glass house should not throw stones.
Those who practice "sovereignty" in the lands they conquered should not be shocked and surprised when others do the same.

The drug smugglers are dead can we move on now please.

The happy clappers should be more concerned about their kiddie fiddling pastors.

Craig Minns,

"Hasbeen, I can only say I'm envious of you for having never made a stupid decision that could have gone badly wrong. But gee, you must have had a boring life..."

The decision by the two un-lamented drug smugglers was only 'stupid' in retrospect.
Had they not been caught then their actions would have led to much personal gain and they would, undoubtedly, have made the decision to try it again.

Their decision to engage in drug smuggling was well thought out, well planned and well executed, the only fly in the ointment was a concerned parent of one of the mules and the AFP when they passed the info on to the Indonesians..

Is Mise, it was always stupid.

They chose to do something in which a successful outcome was entirely based on luck, where the consequences were essentially unsurvivable and that they had no way of knowing what the odds were before they started.

I ride motorcyles and have done so for most of my life. I like to ride them fast and I used to like to ride them faster. I've had some very close calls while doing so, but I've never had a serious accident while riding fast, because I assess the risks and manage them. I won't go into the details, I'm sure you can work that out.

However, I have had one very serious accident when I was riding slow. I chose to overtake a car which was indicating a right turn and it turned left instead, hitting my leg and foot and knocking me into a power pole at about 60 or so km per hour. As it happened, I realised I'd been an idiot and hadn't properly assessed the situation: the driveway the car was indicating for was blocked with a row of besser blocks and the driver had veered back into my lane without looking.

I still consider that accident my own stupid fault.

Beg to differ, Craig, the expected outcome was based on planning and it was only by chance that they were caught.

Your experience with the car driver indicating one thing and doing another is a daily experience around Glen Innes, just to the north of Lang St there is a Shell service station (actually it's on the corner) and motorists approaching Lang St from the south often indicate for a left turn but pass Lang St and turn into the service station.

I know one lady who was almost hit because she assumed, as one would, that a car was going to turn into Lang St, so she stepped off the footpath and the car continued across the intersection and she was almost run down, to add insult to injury the front seat passenger abused her.

When lighted turn indicators first became common my father said to me
and I remember his words very well,
"Son, the only sure thing that a turn indicator tells you is that there is electricity passing through a globe."

His advice has saved me a few times and the only time that I ignored it my car was almost hit by a school bus that had a faulty indicator switch.
A small voice beside me said "What did you say that grandfather told you?"

Craig Minns, I am not stupid enough to ride motorbikes fast on the public road, or even drive cars.

However I did like driving cars very fast in my younger days. Unlike you I did it appropriately, on the race track. I set a Bathurst lap record in 1967 in my Brabham F2 which was never beaten.

So sorry old boy, I have not had a boring life, I have simply behaved appropriately, & mostly legally.

About the only thing boring is that I have never even touched, let alone used a drug. I have found enough adrenalin pumping activities in life, to never need the synthetic variety.

I actually did a couple of dozen laps laps of Lakeside in a Formula Ford in February. At 75 I am getting a bit past my best, but was pleasantly surprised to get to within 5 seconds of my times there in 1968 in the Formula 1 Brabham Repco, in that years Gold Star Australian Formula 1 championship. These modern tyres must be pretty good.

That told me I have no desire to really push the envelop these days. If I do it again, it will be in my TR8, or my Honda S2000, something a little more comfortable, & suited to my maturity.

Is Mise, you're most welcome to differ, it would be a terribly dull discussion if we were all in furious agreement. However, I'll tell you why I think you're wrong to do so in this case.

The Bali 9, by all accounts, did as I did when I had the serious accident I described, which is they trusted in everything they had planned going as they hoped it would, when there were very influential factors out of their control and about which they hadn't properly informed themselves.

Just like me, they were stupid. Just like me, they suffered the consequence of that stupidity. Unlike me, they didn't have the luck to survive.

Hasbeen, in his rush to get to the wrong conclusion as quickly as possible, gives us another example of how to make bad judgements with inadequate information. The worst indignity I have ever suffered while riding a motorcycle fast was at the change of direction entering the busstop at Lakeside, flicking off over the highside after a very brief and surprising tankslapper caused by a few drops of oil I'd picked up about 50 meters earlier as I went around another bike out of the Karussel and ran wide onto the grass, where a car had dropped its guts and the kitty litter hadn't been applied. It wasn't until I dropped it over to the right that the oil touched the track, front and back almost at the same time.

The busstop isn't there any more, as far as I know, which is a shame. Getting it right through the karussel and up over the hill through the busstop before blasting down to the loop was one of the great challenges and a huge buzz. If you got it right you could easily pick up a second or more on a RZ 250 compared to a more conservative approach.

My little GPz 500 is currently off the road, sadly, while I spruce her up. She's not as fast as my two-strokers were, but fast enough.

Craig Minns, you call me hysterical and content free well what is this; "There will be considerable public anger from both the left and the right, the former driven by concern for human rights and natural justice, the latter by racism, jingoism and twisted nationalism".

Sorry I reacted to Lefty baiting but if anything was demonising and hateful bile the above statement is. I am in total opposition to execution, the main reason being to protect real people from Lefty justified killing, they get the taste for blood and start to binge. CCCP executed 20 +million, The Middle Kingdom 70+, the Lefty darling of Pol Pot only a few (but he tried harder), Kim's Kingdom and how many disappearances are there in Venezuela?

Lefty opposition is not against State Murder but opposition to the type they like.

Hasbeen,

Totally off topic, but you mentioned the Repco Brabham, did you know the late Phil Irving ("Slide Rule")?
I had the pleasure of travelling back from England with him in around 1961 on the SS "Orion", and proofread the manuscript of one of his books for him.
I last met up with him at Oran Park in 1975 when I was racing my Alvis 12/50.

There is no "fundamental injustice" Bruce Haigh.

The penalty for drug trafficking in Indonesia is death. That fact is universally known and extremely well publicised. Chan and Sukamaran knew it before they went to Indonesia with the planned and conscious intent to break the law. Indonesia could have executed all of the Bali 9 but chose to only shoot the ringleaders, and not the mules.

The President of Indonesia is doing exactly what his people expect him to do by showing no mercy to drug traffickers. There is nothing wrong with a leader making himself popular by doing what his people want him to do.

The people of Indonesia have a sovereign right and a human right to make laws applicable for their own society. With 50 Indonesians dying every day from drug addictions, the executions of drug traffickers is understandable and warranted.

The whole anti death penalty cause is nothing more than an exercise in fashion by a section of the population well known for their contempt of ordinary people and the democratic process. It is also a religious duty by the Catholic Church which is an international business that has no mandate to interfere with the political processes within the countries in which it does business.

Soldiers execute the enemies of their people every day. US drones are executing ISIS fighters, Taliban leaders and Al Qaida operatives and nobody gives a shiit. Where was the media driven outrage when that little bastard Amrozi was executed?

OK, Brucie, the two premises I take exception to are...

1. The idea that "Australia" opposes the death penalty. Let's have a referenda about that and I will accept it if the majority accepts it. I suspect that the reason why we will never have a referenda on that topic is because our political leaders already know that the death penalty is supported by the majority of Australians. In the USA, politicians who oppose the death penalty get chucked out of office, and those that support it get elected.

2. Claiming that the Indonesian President is weak because he is doing exactly what his electorate want him to do. The Indonesian people want drug traffickers executed. Got that? The Indonesian President is responds to what his people demand. It is to bad that Australian politicians do not follow his example, because if they did, we would never have had Multiculturalism, Muslim immigration would be curtailed, "Australian" terrorists fighting for ISIS would have their citizenship (and their dole cheques) curtailed, and we would probably have the death penalty ourselves.

LEGO, some people are great supporters of all sorts of stern measures that they think will never apply to them or theirs.

And some people are just pricks in a wall around their own minds.

The weasel words of the AFP officers today spelled it out loud and clear - the AFP with quiet LNP government approval operates a death penalty for drug dealers, the executions being outsourced to a country which has been a murderous blot on the face of the earth ever since it was cobbled together as a quisling network by the Jap occupiers in the 1940s.

Should there be a death plenty in Australia? Barnaby Joyce and his fellow-rednecks say yes. The baboons that murdered our five journos at Balibo followed by countless East Timorese and Papuans sure deserve execution but are protected by other baboons higher up the Indo hierarchy. In Australia with our history (at least in WA) of vindictive wrong convictions certainly not. And even less for offences below wilful murder even if guilt is proved up to the hilt.

penalty, not "plenty"