AUSTRALIANS REJECT DEATH PENALTY FOR MURDER CASES

October 22, 2007: two-thirds of people in Australia believe people convicted of murder should not face the death penalty, according to a poll by Roy Morgan International.
67 per cent of respondents think the punishment for this crime should be imprisonment. However, 55 per cent of respondents think Australians arrested on drug trafficking charges in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Singapore, where the death penalty is applied, should not be excused from the punishment.
On October 8, Robert McClelland, the opposition’s Australian Labor Party (ALP) foreign affairs spokesman, said an ALP government would campaign against the death penalty across Asia, in coordination with five Asian nations that have abolished the maximum penalty. (Sources: Angus Reid, 22/10/2007)