Throughout this, senior members of the Government lecture us to not get emotional and certainly to not upset the Indonesians or the Singaporeans. Academics in the field have written that criticism of Corby's original trial is "disturbing". One columnist even said the campaign against the Corby trial outcome was a sign of our "immaturity".

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, showing the depth of his prickly side, declared that the Melbourne criminal defence lawyer Robert Richter was a "creep" for stating the truth - that the Australian Government did not do enough to save Nguyen Tuong Van.

There have been extensive reports in the Herald that bribes were paid in the Leslie case, and now the main area of contention is around how big they were The Prime Minister said Leslie should shut up about that. One cannot be certain whether his concern is for how that knowledge might affect the so-called Bali nine or for how it might upset the "sensitivities of the Indonesians". His form points to the latter.

There is an "investigation" into the Leslie case by Indonesia's judicial commission. Sukoco Suprapto, a member of the commission, has already concluded that "the sentence received by Leslie is very light". The Indonesian Government has promised to tackle official corruption and has pinpointed the judicial system as being among its most graft-ridden sectors. Yet, to raise this in the context of the quality of justice meted out to Australians is either disturbing, immature or insensitive - so we'll have to watch our P's and Q's.

While on matters insensitive, it might be well to recall the little dance the Government did on the Nguyen case. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Affairs Minister went through their hand-wringing routine while, at the same time, never letting down the hardliners. John Howard and Downer dropped the remark into various bits of news commentary that Nguyen was smuggling enough heroin for between 20,000 and 26,000 hits.

Janet Manuell, a criminal barrister in Sydney, says this misinformation went unchallenged. The average hit available on the streets of Sydney contains between 0.15 and 0.2 grams of heroin, she says, which is a standard "foil". It costs about $50. The 400 grams for which Nguyen was executed was enough for between 2000 and 2667 hits, not 26,000. Howard and Downer were only out by a factor of 10, but, if the prejudice works, who cares?

We're really talking about one hit for 2000 users, or enough for a committed user for more than a year. That's not quite the same thing as "thousands of lives destroyed" by this quantity of the drug. Importantly, if Nguyen had been sentenced here for importing 400 grams of heroin he might have expected to receive a sentence of between five and six years, and a four- to five-year non-parole period. Still, let's not be insensitive to the Singapore Government or "oligarchy".

Before the space completely evaporates this week, there is the important matter of Corby. Mark Trowell, the silk from Perth who the Government invited to advise on, or assist with, her case, got into trouble with his local bar association for speaking out about one of Corby's Indonesian team seeking $500,000 for "bribes".

Her lawyer, Hotman Paris Hutapea, does not seem to have been in trouble for disturbing or immature comments about the corruption in his court system. "I live in Indonesian courts every day; it's unethical if I say something bad about my court, although you know the answer. Everything is possible," he said in July. He hastened to add that for the Corby case he was "temporarily clean".

In October, the Bali appeals court reduced Corby's sentence from 20 to 15 years. Hutapea saw this as something of a victory. "At least I've made progress, even without any witnesses, only using argument and the public image." The public image bit included recruiting an Indonesian soapie starlet, Anisa Tri Hapsari, in an attempt to swing public opinion behind the accused.

The next stage is the appeal to the Supreme Court, but the prosecution is also appealing against the reduction of the sentence. The outcome of that round will be known next year.

In July, the head of the Judicial Conference of Australia, Justice Ronald Sackville, said that "rightly or wrongly, [most Australians] have insufficient confidence in the Indonesian justice system to accept the [Corby] verdict as legitimate". That situation is more likely to persist if we abide by the instruction to be mature and circumspect.