Every day, all over the world, prisoners - men, women and even children - face execution. The death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading. We are opposed to its use, everywhere in the world, for whatever reason. At the end of 2010, nearly 18 000 were on death row, facing the death sentence.
Conscription, compulsory military service for young men, has been a contentious issue throughout Australia's history. The Defence Act 1903 was one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the new Commonwealth government, and it gave the government the power to conscript for the purposes of home defence.