The Australian Federal Police's guidelines on co-operation with countries that use the death penalty, introduced after the Bali nine ringleaders were sentenced to death, are not strong enough to prevent future executions and need to be reviewed, according to legal experts.
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The government has defended the AFP guidelines as appropriate, but Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has said they might need to be further tightened.
The calls came as political fights broke out over the Abbott government's decision last year to remove reference to the death penalty in its ministerial directive to the AFP, which is facing renewed scrutiny over its role in handing over the Bali nine to Indonesian authorities a decade ago.
In 2010, Labor's then minister for home affairs, Brendan O'Connor, included Australia's opposition to the death penalty in his official ministerial direction to the AFP. This was removed from a new ministerial direction issued last year by the Abbott government.
Labor justice spokesman David Feeney said the omission "raises concerns that protecting Australians from the risk of being subject to the death penalty in a foreign jurisdiction is no longer to be considered a critical priority for the AFP".
Justice Minister Michael Keenan refused to say why the government had removed the direction and accused Labor of playing politics with tragedy.
Mr Keenan said the important document was not his ministerial directive, but the AFP's operational guidelines - introduced by the Rudd government in 2009 - which he said were "very strict" and provide explicit advice to the AFP on dealing with evidence in death-penalty cases.
But Simon Bronitt, deputy dean of law at the University of Queensland, said the guidelines were "thin" and did not contain any presumption against the AFP co-operating with overseas authorities on cases where the death penalty could be be applied.
When asked if the guidelines would have prevented the AFP from tipping off Indonesian authorities about the Bali nine ringleaders, Professor Bronitt said: "No, not necessarily."
"The guidelines are very thin and are human rights deficient," Professor Bronitt, former director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, said.
"They are entirely agnostic about the issue of police co-operation with authorities in jurisdictions where the death penalty is legal.
"There is no proper articulation of the human rights values we have subscribed to in national legislation or international treaties."
The guidelines list six "prescribed factors" the AFP must consider before approving co-operation on a potential death penalty case where the suspect has not yet been detained.
As well as Australia's stance on the death penalty, the factors include the age and nationality of the suspect, as well as Australia's interest in promoting and securing co-operation from overseas agencies in combating crime.
Professor Bronitt said the Law Reform Commission should examine whether the guidelines should be tightened so Australia's opposition to the death penalty carried greater weight.
When the guidelines were introduced, the Law Council of Australia expressed concern they allowed the AFP "broad discretion to provide interagency assistance, even in circumstances where it may ultimately result in the imposition of the death penalty".
"The guide does not even establish, as an overriding principle, that information and assistance should only be provided in death-penalty cases in exceptional circumstances," the Law Council said in 2010. "In short, under the guide, whether information and assistance is provided in any particular case is left to a balancing exercise that is neither weighted in favour or against the provision of information in death-penalty cases."
Law Society president Duncan McConnel said the Law Council would prefer more explicit prohibitions in the guidelines but the government was unlikely to support this.
Mr McConnel said Mr Keenan's decision to drop reference to the death penalty in his ministerial directive was "disconcerting", as it seemed to weaken Australia's strong opposition to the death penalty.
