By Mark Kenny
Australians may reconsider travel to Indonesia if the two Australian convicted drug couriers currently on death row are executed by firing squad as expected, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has warned.
Authorities in Indonesia are finalising plans to move Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran from Bali to their execution place on a prison island off Java, however a date for the transfer is yet to be determined.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop: "Executing these two young men will not solve the drug scourge in Indonesia."Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Ms Bishop on Friday described the situation as "tense" as the execution of the two drug smugglers loomed in Indonesia.
Speaking on 3AW radio, Ms Bishop warned Australians may be moved to boycott Indonesia if the executions go ahead.
Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were two of the Bali nine members, and are facing execution within days. Credit: Anta Kesuma
"I think the Australian people will demonstrate their deep disapproval of this action, including by making decisions about where they wish to holiday," she said.
The comments, Ms Bishop's strongest yet, are a sign of growing frustration in Australia and suggest the close bilateral relationship between Canberra and Jakarta is now in play in the fight to save the pair.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said he doubted Ms Bishop made the tourism comments.
"I doubt a foreign minister from a friendly country and who is respected in the region made a statement like that," Mr Nasir said.
"If she said she advised Australians not to sell drugs in Indonesia, I would support her."
The Bali nine ringleaders were sentenced to death in 2006 for trying to smuggle heroin into Australia.
This week the Australian Parliament debated the impending executions and unanimously called on Indonesia to show mercy to the two Australians.
Ms Bishop has been asking for clemency for the pair and says their execution will not solve the drug scourge in Indonesia.
She says the government will leave no stone unturned in its bid to secure a stay on the Bali nine members' executions.
"Executing these two young men will not solve the drug scourge in Indonesia," she told Fairfax radio on Friday.
"It's a very tense situation."
The prospect of reduced travel by Australians to Bali is also regarded as a possibility by the former High Court judge Michael Kirby, who predicted that holiday makers might now look to alternatives.
Fiji, which not so long ago was shunned after a military coup, may be among options now considered by Australians.
Australia's two-way trade relationship with Indonesia is worth just over $5 billion annually according to Austrade, but tourism is a huge factor with over a million Australians visiting the archipelago in 2013-14.
While it now appeared there was nothing else to be done to save the two men from the firing squad, Mr Kirby said it was just possible that there might be another step.
"Right to the very end I would expect the Australian government, with the support of the opposition and Australian people, will be making representations," he told Sky News.
Ms Bishop's comments come after she and her opposition counterpart Tanya Plibersek on Thursday pleaded for the men to be spared in speeches to Parliament.
The Foreign Minister's voice wavered at times as she made a statement to Parliament on Thursday, telling her fellow MPs that both Chan and Sukumaran are "changed men".
Ms Plibersek, used the example of her own husband's drug conviction and jailing in the 1980s to argue for their lives. Ms Plibersek's husband Michael Coutts-Trotter is now a senior NSW public servant.
"I perhaps have a particular view of remorse and redemption," Ms Plibersek said.
"I imagine what would have happened if he had been caught in Thailand instead of Australia, where the crime was committed ... what would the world have missed out on?
with AAP, Jewel Topsfield, Judith Ireland, Karuni Rompies