IT SEEMS there is now little that can be done to save the lives of convicted Bali drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Based on media reports, their executions may be carried out early tomorrow morning.

There have been urgent attempts by their lawyers and the Federal Government to have the killings postponed, and while their efforts are admirable, there seems little chance they will be successful.

So, by the time you read tomorrow's Daily Examiner two people who, by all reports, have turned their lives around while in prison, will be dead.

But what will their killing have achieved?

It certainly won't give any other prisoners in Bali an incentive to rebuild their lives because clearly that doesn't earn you any credit.

It won't help find the masterminds behind the drug smuggling operation, although if the authorities were serious about that they would have found them years ago.

And two families will have agony piled on the pain they have lived with for a decade.

Capital punishment is, and always will be, barbaric and ineffective.