Locke Keith: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Second Reading 
Locke Keith: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:614;Page:10343] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this bill. It is very good that the previous speaker and the member who introduced the bill referred to Nandor Tanczos because it was his Clean Slate Bill which was pulled out of the members’ ballot which started this whole process in Parliament. It was a very good bill and the Government fairly quickly decided that the bill was such a good idea that it had to think of it too which was good. Phil Goff introduced his bill. It was not as good as Nandor Tanczos’ bill although I understand that the two bills were considered together in the Justice and Electoral Committee and amendments were made that brought Phil Goff’s bill more into line with Nandor Tanczos’ bill in several respects. For instance I think Phil Goff’s bill had a 10-year time period whereas as speakers have indicated this bill has a 7-year time period before a person is clean-slated under its provisions. 
There has been quite a delay with this bill. There has been about a year between the Government’s announcement that it would bring the bill forward and its introduction but at last it has come back to the House for a second reading. It is a tribute to the select committee the way its members worked on it and the work of the advisers. The changes they made have by and large been in a very good direction. 
As people have indicated there is quite a long tradition in this House of movement towards such a bill and I think Darren Hughes mentioned the name of Richard Prebble who came forward with a private member’s bill some years ago in that respect. It is interesting that Mr Prebble also moved a private member’s bill to make New Zealand nuclear-free; he has turned round on that issue too. When his biography is written I think people will look at his earlier days with the greatest respect and will learn most from those days. 
It is important that as the bill has been processed the number of exemptions have reduced. There are not very many exemptions under this bill and I think that is good. Richard Worth said that it was bad and that the bill is more or less a blanket bill. I think it is good if laws are fairly even in their application; that is something we should strive for. It is important in terms of the changes that have been made that decriminalised offences are automatically and immediately clean-slated. 
 There is a bit of a problem in that the bill does not allow any clean-slating for custodial sentences. That can create inconsistencies because people who served custodial sentences in the past or were convicted of something that had a custodial sentence but the sentence for which has been changed to give a lighter penalty are caught in a bit of an inconsistency. The bill does not take into account the changes and the liberalisation of the law in some respects. 
Previous speakers have said that the bill is soft on law and order. I cannot see it that way. How is encouragement of the full rehabilitation of people soft on law and order? How is it soft on law and order if someone has not reoffended for 7 years? Darren Hughes referred to this in his comments or his interjection. If we look at the graphs in the Justice and Electoral Committee report we see that after 7 years the reoffending rate is very low. What we are saying is that those people will be reintegrated fully into society without the sorts of discrimination penalties and negative attitudes that would ensue if we did not have this bill. That helps law and order in society—not the other way round. 
Of course a bit of a public campaign will be required to educate everyone in the community including those who have offended and who will be clean-slated to let them know they will be automatically eligible under this law and will not have to disclose their history with regard to those offences to their employer or potential employer insurance agency etc. That is very good. It will require quite a bit of education of employers too because they might demand or somehow try to penalise workers for not disclosing offences that have been clean-slated. 
Dail Jones referred to the Springbok tour. He said that all those people who had minor convictions from the Springbok tour situation will get off and be clean-slated under this bill. I think most of them are very proud of their convictions—the ones I have talked to. But those convictions can still negatively impact on people’s careers if they have to disclose them. 
I think a couple of speakers have brought up the contradiction in that the clean-slating will operate in New Zealand but when people go overseas to the United States or Canada they might still have to disclose those convictions. I think we should look at two things. In some respects this law is not at the head of the world; there are a lot of other countries that have similar laws and some are better than this law. But we should try to be part of this world and should have more progressive legislation in this area. I think we can be a model for some other countries—in North America etc.—that do not have fully adequate provisions in this respect. We can look at some examples of the problems caused by those overseas jurisdictions that are a bit weak in this area. For instance one of our greatest athletes Erin Baker—our great triathlete world-renowned—had a Springbok tour conviction. When she wanted to compete in a sports event in Hawaii I think it was in the Ironman triathlon she was excluded. It took her quite a while to get round that. We should be in the vanguard of moves—[ 
Interruption 
] What I am saying is that by our going along with other countries that are leading the way in this respect we will eventually help sweep up the United States and people there will see the light. That is the way it goes. I have faith in the people of the United States to get beyond the present administration and the present situation and ultimately to introduce such progressive legislation. 
I think this bill is a very good bill. The Greens are fully supportive of it and we have played a great role in it in terms of Nandor Tanczos’ bill being in the ballot and also through his participation in the select committee to progress this situation. 
A previous speaker alluded to the police being a little bit cagey in their response to the bill. As I understand it they were intensively criticised in the select committee when they raised some problems about the exchange of information between international jurisdictions because when it came down to it there did not seem to be any problem in exchanging essential information between police jurisdictions. In that respect this bill is a very good bill. 
I also understand that Doug Graham—a former National MP of some note and a former Minister of Justice—made some moves down the clean slate track as well. I think there is a good tradition in both ACT and National in that respect; unfortunately the people in those two parties seem to have gone a bit backwards. I think we have to realise that this bill will affect many many thousands of decent New Zealanders many of whom are starring in their lives and will benefit very much from this bill. For many thousands of people in the future—young people in particular—who commit small crimes and do not want them hanging round their necks for the rest of their lives this bill will be very good.