King MattMATT KING (National—Northland): Madam Chair thank you. First of all I'd like to acknowledge the members of the Justice Committee that are here today including the chair Raymond Huo. I would like to acknowledge the great work done on this by the Hon Amy Adams and also I'd like to acknowledge the Hon Andrew Little for taking it on. I was put on the Justice Committee when I first became an MP which was only a few months ago and I was learning about how select committees work. I thought that dealing with this particular case was the way select committees operated and I didn't realise that it's not always the case. This important piece of legislation I'm proud to have served on and I found that the whole select committee across parties supported this. Quite frankly it's a no-brainer to support it anyway. It was a very collegial manner that we dealt with it. What I found was that select committee members brought their own life experiences to the discussion—in particular we had Ginny Andersen who's got a background with police and intelligence and justice. We also had the dinosaur" up there Greg O'Connor who has had 30 years in the police and has huge amounts of invaluable experience—[Interruption]—and I say that quite fondly. So he brought a lot to the table. Also the officials that are here today also brought their contribution. So we all worked together and I think we got a good result. Now one of the things that we argued about or talked about actually—discussed; we didn't argue but we talked about it—was what the definition of expunging would be or what it would literally mean. Would it mean that on the computer screen it would say the conviction and then have the word "Expunged" by it or did it mean that there was no reference to what the conviction was and it would just say "Expunged"? The officials came back with what they believed would be the way to deal with it and that was just to have the word "Expunged". But from our experiences in the police and others we felt that any reference on that computer screen that could identify what it was would defeat the purpose. So then the officials came back to us and said "Well why don't we just make it an offence to disclose whatever was on the screen?" but I have to hark back to my experience when I was in the police which was that—and it doesn't relate to this particular thing but it's along similar lines. That was a schoolteacher that came to the area and he had some conviction—just a very minor one; a very minor one. It was a small town and people within the courthouse had access to that information and disclosed it and it caused him a lot of problems. It was very minor stuff and nothing to do with this but it caused him problems. So from my own experience I felt that the computer record itself had to have no reference in there otherwise it would defeat the purpose and I believe that's where we've gone with it. So that's my contribution. I'd have to say it was a pleasure to be part of the team. I'm no longer on that select committee. I've been moved to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee but it was a pleasure to be on that team. It's a pleasure to be part of this process and I recommend it to the House."