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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1426 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

time to avoid the stigma which attaches to having been convicted of a criminal offence. It also prevents such persons from being discriminated against-for example, in employment or obtaining accommodation-because of an old conviction for an offence.

As members will be aware, the government released an exposure draft of the bill at the beginning of the year, seeking views on how such a scheme should operate in the territory. The government's proposal was for a scheme largely similar to that in operation in New South Wales. None of the comments received opposed spent convictions legislation in principle. Indeed, it was generally seen as a positive initiative. However, in response to a number of comments on the exposure draft bill, some changes have been made to the proposed legislation.

For the information of members, I will briefly run through the key elements of the legislation. Under the legislation, a spent conviction is disregarded by excusing the person convicted from disclosure of the spent conviction and/or allowing the person convicted to claim he or she has never been charged or convicted of the offence leading to the conviction. The bill sets out the convictions which may be part of the scheme and become spent, the circumstances in which an eligible offence becomes spent, and the mechanisms for dealing with non-compliance with the requirements of the scheme.

The criterion for defining the convictions which may become spent is the penalty which was imposed on the convicted person. Convictions resulting in a penalty other than imprisonment-for example, a fine, community service order or periodic detention-can be spent, but once a penalty of imprisonment is imposed, the conviction will be able to be spent only if the term of imprisonment imposed for an offence does not exceed the limit set by the scheme. The bill provides that, if a sentence of imprisonment exceeding six months is imposed, the conviction cannot become spent under the scheme. This is the same approach as is taken in New South Wales and the Northern Territory spent convictions legislation.

Convictions for some types of offences will simply not ever be eligible to be spent. The government does not propose to permit convictions for sexual offences to be able to be spent. Such convictions will, for the protection of the community, always be required to be disclosed. Again, this approach is consistent with the New South Wales and Northern Territory schemes. Adopting the New South Wales treatment of sexual offences gives some cross-border consistency in a matter of profound community concern.

No existing spent convictions scheme in Australia extends to the offences of a body corporate. The policy rationale of a spent convictions scheme-to recognise rehabilitation in appropriate cases and discourage recidivism by disregarding certain offences-is obviously not appropriate to bodies corporate. The proposed ACT spent convictions scheme does not apply to bodies corporate.

The protection of the scheme is extended to certain nominal penalties that are not convictions in the strict sense. This is done by providing that the "convictions" become spent immediately, or upon the satisfaction of conditions. For example, a finding that an offence has been proved without proceeding to a conviction is treated as an offence but becomes spent immediately after the finding is made.

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