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Lawyers for the nine Bali heroin defendants have been dealt a slim hand, but there is one card always there for the playing: too young, not bright enough. Scott Rush's team have finally thrown it on the table.

Of the nine, only Matthew Norman is Rush's junior, and neither look their 19 years. You'd ask them for ID at a nightclub, and on sight it's hard to credit them with being part of a drug syndicate.

It's this combination of youth and apparent naivety that Rush's lawyers reached for yesterday as they asked judges to dismiss the charges against him.

The prosecution, the defence said, was being "imaginative" - so imaginative that they wanted the judges to believe someone "who is still very young, adolescent" could be "so clever and brave".

Robert Khuana was the first defence lawyer to use what might be called the "young and stupid" argument, and also the first to employ a tactic more common in Australian courts.