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AMNESTY International Bendigo branch president David Hooke, who helped organise last week's protest against the planned executions, said the news hadn't come as a surprise.
"We had noticed that the Indonesian government is digging in its heels over these executions and being realistic we didn't think that we were going to save this particular batch of prisoners, however we are in it for the long term," he said.
"It doesn't matter what people have done or how little sympathy we might have for them as criminals, we always oppose the death penalty."
Federal Member for Bendigo Lisa Chesters was among more than 100 MPs from both sides of politics who signed a letter to the Indonesian ambassador requesting clemency for the pair last week.
On Thursday federal parliament also passed a unanimous motion of support, instigated by Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop.
"This was one of the few issues today in parliament where there was bipartisan support," Ms Chesters said.
"It's an incredibly sad time for their families and it reminds us how important it is to have a fair justice system, both these men have demonstrated remorse."
EARLIER:
BALI nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran could be transferred as early as Friday to the penal island dubbed "Indonesia's Alcatraz" ahead of their executions.
The head of the Bali prosecutor's office, Momock Bambang Samiarso, said the order to transfer the men from Bali's Kerobokan prison to Nusakambangan Island, off the coast of Java, had been made by the justice minister's office on Wednesday.
However, he said no date had been set.
"It is not possible today, but soon, as soon as possible. We don't have a target. The sooner the better," Mr Samiarso said after a meeting with airport and Garuda representatives to coordinate the transfer.
The men will fly to Yogyakarta on a commercial flight and then be driven for about five hours to Cilacap, where they will catch a ferry to Nusakambangan Island, which is home to several maximum security prisons.
It was on a field on Nusakambangan Island that five drug felons were shot dead on January 18.
However, lawyers for Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran say they are still very much alive and there is still hope they may stay that way.
The lawyers filed an application in the administrative court in Jakarta on Wednesday seeking a stay in the executions, which are scheduled for this month.
In a statement, lawyers Julian McMahon and Michael O'Connell say there has been a "serious error of law" and the two men have been denied natural justice.
They say the law requires President Joko Widodo to have thoroughly considered the clemency applications.
Instead, the statement says, Mr Joko and other government officials have made it "absolutely clear" that all clemency pleas for drug felons will be rejected as a matter of policy.
"President Joko Widodo and Attorney General Prasetyo have repeatedly claimed that other countries must respect Indonesian law," the lawyers said. "It is now time for them to do the same."
The statement said the administrative court challenge was not "some half-baked last-minute measure" but raised genuine substantive issues of fairness and justice. "Moreover, it would constitute a grave miscarriage of justice for the executions to proceed before the court could determine whether the decision to refuse clemency was in accordance with the law."
It comes after an emotional Julie Bishop has pleaded with the Indonesian government to grant mercy to convicted drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, saying they should not have to "pay with their lives" for crimes committed a decade ago.
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".
This came as her Labor counterpart, Tanya 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?
"They would have missed out on the three beautiful children we had together. They would have missed out on a man who spent the rest of his life making amends for the crime that he committed."
Ms Plibersek told the House that she also looked at Chan and Sukumaran's situation from the perspective of the death of her brother, Phillip, who was fatally stabbed in his PNG apartment, while fighting off an intruder.
"In 1997, I lost my brother to a violent crime in Port Moresby," she said.
"I know that if I had been the one making the decision about the punishment of the person who did that crime, I couldn't have thought of a punishment bad enough."
The deputy Labor leader said that was why decisions about punishment were not made on the basis of how we feel, "but on the basis of universal, consistently-applied rules".
Ms Bishop, who has moved a motion calling for the stay of executions, told the House that both Chan and Sukumaran were "deeply, sincerely remorseful for their actions. Both men have made extraordinary efforts to rehabilitate".
Talking of the study that the men have done in jail, and their work to help other prisoners in Kerobokan, she said they were "paying their debt to society".
Ms Bishop said that fellow inmates had offered to take the two men's place in execution to Indonesian President Joko Widodo, due to the "profound effect" of Chan and Sukumaran's "inspiring humility and service".
"Both families have told me they are proud of the men their sons have become," the Foreign Minister said, before adding that she believed Indonesia would "lose the most from executing these two young men".
Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death in 2006 for their parts in the infamous foiled "Bali nine" heroin smuggling operation.
Both men have recently had their bids for a presidential pardon knocked back and are expected to be executed by firing squad this month.
Lawyers for the pair are working on a last ditch challenge.
Ms Bishop stressed that Australian prime ministers, from John Howard onwards, had made representations to Indonesia on behalf of Chan and Sukumaran.
More than 55 personal representations at ministerial and prime ministerial level have been made over the past decade.
Ms Bishop has been in contact with the families of both men.
"When I spoke to the families, who were in Jakarta, by phone this week, they told me how it was virtually impossible to be strong for each other," she said.
"How it was unbearable for them to see their sons, their brothers, not knowing if it would be their last time. How could anyone not be moved by their heartbreaking pleas for mercy?"