The slippery slide

There is nothing more certain than the death penalty is  treacherous political ground.

Comments yesterday by Labor frontbencher Robert McLelland  about the death penalty brought a sort of diplomatic rebuke from Kevin Rudd.

McLelland outlined (it seems to me) what is the official position of all major parties and that is that they are opposed to the death sentence. The case in point is Indonesia's application of the death penalty against the so-called Bali bombers.

That there has been a weakening of the position of absolute opposition to death as penal sentence there can be little doubt. The PM has for a long time declared a general unwillingness to ask death promoting governments to commute death sentences.

The official process seems to be that when Australians are sentenced to death we express some opposition, but increasingly it seems that when crimes have been heinous our principles have become a bit gelatinous. We may ask, but not very hard.

McLelland merely said that we are not just opposed to the death penalty for Australians, but we think it is barbaric and inhuman for anyone.

It is not particularly surprising that Howard should decline to ask for the death sentence to not be applied to those Indonesians who perpetrated the Bali massacrs. It is perhaps a little surprising that he should so vehemently declare that as an Australian he finds it very difficult to stick to his principles in the face of the deaths of 88 or so fellow country men and women.

There is, no doubt, a political expediency....since a huge swathe of the electorate is seduced by the notion that the death penalty solves things.

How the death penalty discourages people who see martyrdom as a victory I do not know?

What is more disgusting, is Rudd's sidesteppping the issue and seeming to chastise his colleague, for what (as Minister Downer has pointed out) is his and his party's position. That they are opposed not just to the death penalty for Australians but for any person.

There is no "aspirational" or principled leadership in this country.

There is only electoral fear. Fear that at the next or any election the redneck element will vote you out.

Too bad that those of us who want more principle and less weakness and vacillation appear to be  well in the minority.