Shut Up And Swing

The Australian Government is, apparently, to blame for the fact that a drug smuggler has been sentenced to death.

No, it's not the so-called Bali Nine, but Van Nguyen, on death row in Singapore, convicted of smuggling heroin.

Professor Philip Alston, who is - not surprisingly - the chief adviser on the death penalty to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, reckons it's all our government's fault Nguyen is going to die because we don't lobby Asian death penalty countries hard enough.

Of course, it couldn't be Nguyen's fault he's going to die, could it?

As for the Bali Nine, where actions of the Australian Federal Police really did help get the gang of drug mules and their handler arrested in a death penalty country, one can only congratulate the AFP for a job genuinely well done.

One would rather see drug smugglers arrested in locations where the punishment for the misery they deal in is meaningful rather than arresting them in Australia where criminal sentencing is, frankly, a joke.

So is the fact that alleged smugglers Scott Rush and Renae Lawrence have 'taken legal action against the federal police, saying they acted illegally in exposing them to the death penalty'.

Tough.

-- Nick