Tony Abbott has bluntly reminded Indonesia that Australia is more than a mere neighbour, but a friend.

Jarring as it might sound to deliberately draw a link between the generous aid donations following the 2004 tsunami and the fate of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, remember it is Indonesia that is planning to execute these two Australians.

An Indonesian citizen convicted of drug charges in Australia would never be put to death.

Abbott has not thrown out the textbook on how to plead for clemency. There is no such guide.

Australia's past mercy campaigns with other nations might offer lessons, but the personalities of the decision-makers and circumstances of the crime are always different.

Only a few weeks ago, Abbott said "the government will not make further public comments" about the case of the Bali nine pair, but the closed-door diplomatic niceties have clearly failed to sway the Indonesians.

There has to be public appeal to conscience when the clock is so close to running out. This situation is terrible for the men and their families, and also emotionally taxing for the politicians and officials involved in the case.

When the firing squad pulls the trigger, no one wants to be left wondering at that moment should they have done more.

It is not too cynical to expect the quiet diplomacy has frustrated Abbott, and he also wants an Australian audience to know the tremendous amount of work that has gone into this case - on both sides of politics, across successive governments, and by private citizens.

And the Indonesian public also needs to know, in Abbott's words, that Australians will "feel grievously let down" should the firing squad pull the trigger. We will.

Yet there is little hope this latest delay to the executions is actually a signal that President Joko Widodo has had a change of heart and might eventually back down.

Rather, it appears a further display of the tortured and arbitrary process for carrying out death penalty sentences in Indonesia.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has seized on this extra time to make plain, again, Australia's objections, and this time to do so more directly by challenging Indonesia's claim this is a "domestic issue".

Indonesia similarly seeks clemency for its citizens overseas on death row.

There is a risk the remarks by Abbott and Bishop will inflame some Indonesian nationalists to make tendentious claims about the exposure of Australia's spy operations or policy to turn back asylum seeker boats.

Those are doubtless challenges in the relationship, but they should be sensibly recognised as entirely separate from a decision to shoot dead prisoners.

True, the past tsunami support was also a separate matter, but what Abbott has done is reinforce Australia's previous commitment to the country in desperate times.

Officials have already made clear in private talks with Indonesians that opinion in Australia is against the death penalty.

They have also warned that the executions will damage public goodwill. Any boycott of Bali would not last long, but the long-standing ambition to make the relationship about more than a holiday destination would be diminished.

There is a much bigger concern about Joko's embrace of the death penalty and what his simplistic stubbornness in the face of international criticism indicates about how he sees Indonesia's place in the world.

For Australia is not the only country pleading for mercy, but France, Brazil, Nigeria, Britain, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Netherlands, India, South Africa and more with citizens on death row in Indonesia are all reminding Jakarta they are friends.