By PHIL JARRATT
BACK in February in this column I wrote: “My heart goes out to Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan and their families as the clock ticks down to their seemingly inevitable executions. No matter what view you take on the intricate relationship between crime and punishment, and no matter what you think about the insidious nature of the heroin trade, only the truly merciless among us would not concede that a decade spent locked up and waiting to be shot was sufficient punishment.”
Between the time I wrote that and the early hours of 29 April, it actually seemed for a short while that mercy might be shown, that President Joko Widodo would prove to be the strong and decent man that many Indonesians thought they had voted for. But no, the die was cast and Jokowi was not big enough to stand up to his mentors in the party.
Now our prime minister and foreign minister say, repeat after me, it’s time to move on. The ambassador must come home for a long weekend in some sort of metaphorical slap on the wrist, but after that it’s business as usual, forgive Jokowi, forget the drug scammers. And of course, this is precisely what will happen, and, as I’ve written here, I don’t believe that any punitive measures against Indonesia are warranted or justified, unless we apply them unilaterally to all of the countries of the world with the death penalty on their statute books who still actually kill people, our closest allies included.
But before we move on, can we pause for a moment to consider the “operatic barbarism”, as Geoffrey Robertson described it, of the executions carried out on Nusakambangan last week? Even if you believe that mid-level drug traffickers should die (and in Australia they would have both been free men some time ago), it is surely impossible to justify the media circus that their final days became, and the unforgiveable contempt shown by the authorities and the media to their grieving families. While two Australian citizens waited to be shot through the heart, and possibly finished off with a bullet to the temple, the Indonesian authorities made their weeping families fight their way through a media frenzy to see them a final time. And what made me sickest was the tut-tutting of our own media as they showed the disgusting scenes on the evening news. I’m afraid the “I’m appalled” defence doesn’t do it for me.
A party, me hearties
After the executions and the horrific and mounting death toll in poor little Nepal, I was well and truly ready for some light relief last weekend, and fortunately we had been invited to a pirate party. Being a huge fan of Jimmy Buffett, the singer/surfer/hamburger entrepreneur who has been measuring his life since 40 in pirate years, I started putting together a raunchy Buffett collection on my iPod, a rum drink kit and a parrot head costume, but just in the nick of time my wife advised me that I should tone it down just a little since the party boy was only turning four.
Apparently having heard there might be trouble, the birthday boy dropped around the night before to advise me on my costume: “You have to wear a stripey shirt, Poppy.” Aye, aye, sir, matelot shirt it is then. With a bit of help, I managed to extend this into a kind of Keith Richards-ish get-up, with eye-patch and Peter Fitzsimons red bandana completing the look, and at the appointed noonday hour, we set off for the park.
I don’t know if you’ve been to a four-year-old’s pirate birthday party recently, but they just won’t listen. I don’t remember much about my own fourth birthday party, approximately 60 years ago, but I’m pretty damn sure we didn’t leave anyone’s grandfather sitting alone on a bargain-priced Sun Sofa dressed in pirate gear, sipping a warm beer and talking to himself while getting eaten by ants, while we pranced around playing walk the plank and treasure hunt.
“Hey guys, did I ever tell you about the time we were running a load up the Spanish Main … guys, where are you?”
Anyway, the downside of being a four-year-old pirate is that you peak very early in the day. As the weary buccaneers started to melt down, I found myself surrounded by mums and dads packing up. Here was a chance. “Aarrhh, me hearties, did I ever tell you … guys, guys … ”
Surf’s up at the Logger!
Plenty of swell around the coast last weekend on the back of that destructive East Coast low, and testing conditions for the Noosa Malibu Club’s second annual Logger Comp, presented by Surfstitch, on Saturday. Conditions evened out nicely for Sunday’s finals, with some great surfing going down at First Point. Josh Constable continued his winning streak, following on from last weekend’s win at the Curl Curl Classic in Sydney to make it two Noosa Logger open men’s titles in a row. Dane Wilson and Clinton Guest took out the minor placings to keep him honest, with Nic Jones, Bowie Pollard and Dwayne Paenga following. Noosa’s Rosie Locke took out the open women’s from Kathryn Hughes and Lucy Cantori.
