Page 3921 - Week 12 - Thursday, 29 October 2015
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The Spent Convictions (Historical Homosexual Convictions Extinguishment) Amendment Bill allows people to have convictions for consensual homosexual sex erased permanently from their criminal record. As members have observed, for many decades discriminatory laws that prohibited consensual sexual relationships contributed to much stigma and shame, and even when these laws were removed from the statute books they remained with individuals through the shame of a permanent criminal record.
Therefore, the passage of this bill today, whilst perhaps largely unremarked in this place and even potentially in our broader community, will be a landmark event for those individuals who have lived with that stigma and shame. That criminal record may have had a significant impact on their ability to pursue a career or engage in the workforce, let alone in broader civil society. Such a record would have been a heavy personal burden that that person would have had to have carried throughout their life.
There is no legislative mechanism, no rewriting of statute, that can undo the emotional wounds of being subject to a criminal process for what was and remains a consensual sexual act between two adults. This bill gives, though, some comfort to heal those wounds and to lift the burden of the criminal record. The bill sends a clear message from this place that the discrimination of past decades is no longer acceptable.
The bill recognises that loving and respectful relationships are a positive contribution to our community, regardless of the sex or gender of the people involved in the relationship. The bill therefore provides that a convicted person can apply to have their conviction extinguished. If the convicted person has died, an application can be made on their behalf by their legal representative, a member of their family or someone else who had a close relationship with them. Even though the act of extinguishment for someone who has died will be largely symbolic, the ability to make such an application recognises the broad impact that the conviction would have had and the importance of confirming that, by our own perhaps slightly more enlightened standards, the person should never have been convicted in the first place.
The offences eligible for extinguishment include former sections 79, 80 and 81 of the Crimes Act 1900 as they relate to the so-called offence of buggery. The bill also provides a regulation-making power to allow an eligible offence to be prescribed for extinguishment. The offence must capture either (a) a form of sexual activity with another person of the same sex or (b) a public morality offence. A public morality offence is defined in the act as an offence the essence of which is the maintenance of public decency or morality and by which homosexual behaviour was punished. A similar regulation power exists in the New South Wales and Victorian schemes.
To have a conviction extinguished, an application will ordinarily need to be made in writing to the Director-General of the Justice and Community Safety Directorate. The application will be considered on the papers, and generally oral submissions will not be received or required.
At 6 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
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