An appeal by Schapelle Corby against her conviction for drug smuggling is statistically unlikely to succeed, a lawyer involved in boosting her defence team says.
Corby has decided to appeal against her conviction and 20-year jail term for drug smuggling handed down by a Bali court last week.
John Davies, junior counsel to Tom Percy QC, who has been called in to assist Corby's legal team, dismissed suggestions it was not legally possible to overturn her conviction in Indonesia.
"The information that we have is yes, that it can be overturned," he told ABC radio.
"I understand that it is statistically very unlikely, but then again it's statistically unlikely in the Australian legal system."
Perth QCs Tom Percy and Mark Trowell will work free for Corby, helping her defence team.
Mr Davies said meeting her Indonesian lawyers had been very constructive.
"We have offered to them whatever support and advice we can as they ready themselves to bring on the first of Schapelle's appeals," he said.
Mr Davies said the Indonesian lawyers expressed some disappointment with the Australian authorities, particularly the Australian Federal Police and Customs.
"Now whether that disappointment is justified or not I have no position on, I don't know enough about it," he said.
"They believe more could have been forthcoming from the AFP and Customs to assist in the defence."
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said Australia should be calm and show reason over the Schapelle Corby case and realise 150 other Australians are serving terms in foreign prisons.
Mr Downer, writing in Tuesday's Courier-Mail newspaper, said it might surprise many people that there were about 150 other Australians imprisoned in jails overseas.
They included Indonesia, New Zealand and the United States, and nations in Asia, Central America, the Pacific and the Middle East.
Almost half had been convicted on drug-related offences and two were on death row - one in Singapore and one in Vietnam, Mr Downer said.
"With the Corby case generating so much public debate around Australia and the region, it is important that we take a calm and reasoned approach," he said.
"The place to resolve legal issues is in the courts.
"And the legal processes in Corby's case have some way to run."
The 27-year-old Gold Coast woman's sentence sparked national outrage, with some Australians vowing to boycott Bali and taking back foreign aid donated after the Boxing Day tsunami.
Mr Downer said "angry and emotional" reaction to Corby's case may hinder her chances of an appeal against the sentence.
"This, while perhaps understandable, might not be helpful to those mounting Corby's defence," he said.
"Corby's fate will be decided by the Indonesian legal system. Public abuse of Indonesia, its government and those involved in its legal system, is there unlikely to be beneficial."
Mr Downer said the federal government would do what it could to support Australians who got into difficulty overseas, but had to act within the law and respect the law of other countries.
He said Australians would be resentful if they believed foreign governments or media were trying to interfere with their legal system and there was no reason Indonesians should feel any different.
Some of Corby's supporters have called for a national day of protest on July 10 to coincide with her 28th birthday.
Meanwhile, a prisoner transfer agreement between Australia and Indonesia is no fait accompli, a senior Indonesian official says.
Australia will send a team of negotiators to Indonesia next week to thrash out a deal which could allow Schapelle Corby to serve part of her sentence on home soil.
But Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa says such an arrangement is no certainty and nor is a one-off deal to bring Corby home.
"I must emphasise that agreement ... would be unprecedented from our perspective if we were to have one because we don't have a transfer of sentence agreement with any country whatsoever," he told ABC radio.
"And even if we were to have one, and that's a big if, even if we were to have one that would be an instrument in general in application and not specifically designed to any one particular legal case by any one particular individual."
Mr Natalegawa said the Indonesian government had not received a request from the Australians for a one-off interim deal to bring Corby home if the general negotiations became bogged down.
"If asked ... (our response) would be something along the lines (that) we would rather explore a generic, general type of agreement, rather than something tailor made for one particular case, especially a case in that is still very much in the legal processes now," he said.
"It would be prejudging the appeals process."
He could not give a time frame to negotiate a "generic" deal but admitted it would probably take longer than Australians wanted.
"It's probably going to be longer than most options that are coming out of Australia," Mr Natalegawa said.
Mr Natalegawa also described calls by some Australians to boycott Bali or take back foreign aid as alien and not advisable given recent close relations between the two countries.
"It will be totally alien, totally in contrast to the fact that the two governments' relations has been on a better footing, on a positive note and also the two people's relationship has been extremely close post-Bali, post-tsunami," he said.
"With the greatest respect and with the greatest sympathy to the feelings of Australians to Miss Corby's case, using the case to drive a wedge between the two peoples and the two governments is really not advisable.
