Trust me. I'm a policeman - Constable Kenny

Imagine, if you will, you are the Mum or Dad of an Australian young person, and you found out that your son or daughter was about to do something incredibly stupid and wrong.

You discover that your kid has fallen in with a bunch of other stupid kids and is about to fly to Bali, Indonesia, in order to act as a drug 'mule' and fly back to Australia with drugs strapped to his body.

So you phone the Australian Federal Police -- maybe you find the number of the AFP's Kids, Youth and Family webpage and play the Constable Kenny Play it Safe Game while you're at it.

"Constable Kenny", you weep, "if you promise to stop my son before he gets on the plane in Sydney, I will tell you who he is, what he's about to do, and what the flight number is. You can even arrest him. Please, save my son because in Indonesia they have the death penalty. If he must be arrested, let it be in Australia where at least he can have family visits, and he might serve only 14 years in prison, not be killed or spend the next 80 years rotting in a sub-standard jail."

"Fair dinkum? Rightyo, Mum, you can count on Constable Kenny," says the cloth-eared toy koala. "Now, what's your nipper's name, eh?"

Imagine, then, that Constable Kenny takes all the info you have to offer, watches your boy board the big jet airliner, and phones through the damning evidence to the Indonesian Police. Then helps the Indonesians prepare the case against your child.

"Ha ha ha," says Constable Kenny.

That's what happened to a Mum and Dad in Sydney recently. The AFP allowed nine silly young Australians to fly into a death trap that they themselves set up with the Indonesian wallopers.

Now, two of the Bali Nine have been sentenced to be shot by firing squad and the lucky ones will spend their entire lives in a Bali jail.

You can trust the police. To be police.

The John Howard Government, of which the AFP is an agency, must change the rules immediately so that this never, ever happens again to Aussie kids, no matter how misguided or greedy.

Tagged: police, bali, drugs, heroin, australian+federal+police, australia, narcotics, civil+rights, death+penalty, human+rights, bali+nine