Bali Nine convicted drug smuggler Renae Lawrence has called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help the remaining five members serving life sentences when he meets Indonesian President Joko Widodo in Canberra this week.
Ms Lawrence, who was released in November 2018 after more than 12 years behind bars for drug trafficking, spoke to media in Canberra on Sunday afternoon for the first time since her release and issued a plea to the Australian government.
Renae Lawrence before a court appearance in Bali in 2005.Credit: AAP
"I have no quarrel with the Indonesian legal system, but I continue to worry about these five young men, who, if they had received the same sentence as me, may well have been back in Australia with their families by now," she said, reading from a prepared statement.
Visibly nervous, she apologised to Mr Joko and the Indonesian people, saying she acknowledged that trying to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin from Bali to Australia was wrong and an act of "stupidity".
Fellow Bali Nine member Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died of stomach cancer in 2018 and Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed in 2015.
'I'm really hoping Scott Morrison will stand up and speak to Jokowi and really help these boys.'
Renae Lawrence
The other five members – Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens and Si Yi Chen –remain in prisons in Bali and Java, Ms Lawrence said, with the youngest of the group aged 18 when they were arrested in 2005. The men have all been given whole-of-life sentences.
"Their families constantly travel to Indonesia to visit their sons at great expense," she said.
Ms Lawrence speaks during a press conference in Canberra on Sunday.Credit: AAP
She has asked that Mr Morrison use his discussions with the Indonesian leader to put in place determinant sentences and, if this is not a possibility, to organise a prisoner exchange to allow the families better access in an Australian prison.
"I'm really hoping Scott Morrison will stand up and speak to Jokowi [Mr Joko] and really help these boys," Ms Lawrence said after the press conference.
"It will be a tough ask but I'm really hoping the President of Indonesia does come back ... and see that it will improve the [relationship] with Australia," she said.
While Ms Lawrence had timed the request with Mr Joko's arrival, she said she had been planning to call on the government since before her release in 2018.
"My brain works on overdrive. It's continual, it's always there in the back of my mind that I have to try and do something," she said.
"I just can't leave and forget them."