Our prime minister, Tony Abbott, has made both personal and private appeals to the new Indonesian president, putting everything that could be said (and, probably, saying a good many things that should not have been said) in favour of clemency or mercy. Diplomats and the deputy prime minister, Julie Bishop, have been advancing arguments over an ever longer period. Legal representatives of the condemned pair have shown considerable ingenuity in developing arguments as to why the sentence should not be carried out, or seeking delays. The campaign has been well supported in Australia. The strain on the two condemned men, and on the family, friends and additional advocates has been obvious as the matter has come towards a conclusion, but all have maintained dignity and grace.

It seems quite clear that if the Indonesian system, and the demands of Indonesian politics, as interpreted by the Indonesian president, require that the two men must die, it will be a decision made in the face of all of the best arguments against it. These arguments were well understood, even if they were rejected, by the Indonesian authorities. Indeed, those authorities, from the president down, have repeatedly said, politely but firmly, that they have listened carefully to all of our arguments, and that they understand them perfectly, but that they have also taken other arguments into account in deciding to reject our pleas. The major factor is the need to make a clear statement about the scourge of drug trafficking. But one cannot accuse Indonesian authorities of being weak merely because the death penalty is politically popular in Indonesia.

That is sad, and perhaps wrong (we think it is) but it is also understandable. Particularly if one takes as read the fact that Indonesia has long had, and has long used, a death penalty, and includes it within its panoply of available penalties for serious crime. Australia, like almost all of the nations of Europe, has abandoned the death penalty in its criminal justice system. But if, in this, it is among the mainstream of advanced modern opinion, it can hardly be said that the Indonesian approach is beyond the pale. Australia's major ally, the United States, carries out death sentences far more often than Indonesia. With the US, as opposed to Indonesia, it is almost impossible to find any organising principle, local or national, determining when the sentence will be imposed, or carried out. Fairness certainly does not seem to be a principle – a black murderer is far more likely to be executed than a white one, for example. Among those executed are a disproportionate number of people with serious mental health problems who, in other jurisdictions, with fairer processes, and a better system of trial, might not have been convicted at all. Politics, populism, and a dialogue of revenge is far more evident in the US than in Indonesia. Likewise, Australians angry at a steady but low rate of Indonesian executions often fail to note that the rate of execution in China, Australia's major trading partner, is far higher. Australia, or Australians, are rarely heard in criticism.

Indeed Australian voices tend to be heard only when it is Australians about to be executed. Australian politicians, and Australian advocates, are rarely heard in criticism when Malaysia, or Singapore, or Indonesia, executes their own citizens, or those of other countries. Our prime minister condemns, rightly, the sheer barbarism of activists in the Islamic state movement in beheading its enemies, but, wrongly, is hardly ever heard in condemning similar types of barbarism, after scarcely superior judicial processes, in Saudi Arabia.

Australia has (mostly) a system in place which limits our co-operation with allies, neighbours or others, who actively practise the death penalty, though it seems to have failed in this case. But we seem to do little, except when there is a threatened execution of one of our nationals, to help promote the international movement against capital punishment. Perhaps, if we want to be taken seriously when one of our nationals is involved, we ought to do so. If only so that we can be seen to be arguing for a point of principle, rather than for a favour, an exception, or a discretion exercised not on the individual facts but so as to appease a friend. It is, after all, just that sort of discretionary, and sometimes purchasable, justice for which we often criticise south-east Asian nations.