A moral rupture across the region and deep revulsion in Australia

Singapore's killing of Nguyen Tuong Van under the protection of arbitrary law has brought together a rare solidarity of opposing interests and parties in Australia. I never thought I would share the same feelings on a political level as Bob Brown and Nastasha Stott Despoja - to name just two - but there we were sharing the same shuddering revulsion at the actions of those killers in Singapore who make up in reality a rogue government generating unjust laws.

The revulsion across party political lines has come because the killing of Nguyen Tuong Van is fundamentally unjust and in other circumstances would simply be called murder.

As the Nuremburg trials, the Japanese War trials, and the International Court in The Hague show, no state can justify making or be allowed to make unjust laws, and to kill their citizens and the citizens other lands on the basis of those unjust laws.

The state killing of an ordinary young man who made one stupid mistake must not go unchallenged. That would be a shameful travesty. A campaign must be mounted and carried on to the end. Any hesitation would confirm the view of Singapore's killer government that in the end Australians are weak and irresolute.