Franks Stephen: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Franks Stephen: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12588] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 This bill now involves Parliament in lying. I use that word knowingly and carefully. There is no clean slate. The commentary from the Justice and Electoral Committee says there is no clean slate. The provisions do not provide for a clean slate yet the title of this bill says “Clean Slate”. This bill should not proceed under this title. Nothing of a clean slate is created; there is simply concealment of a record. 
The Minister may not have realised it. By reading the letter he received the Minister in his tear-jerking way misled this Committee in three different respects. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Just before we broke for dinner at 6 o’clock I was referring to the address that the Minister in the chair Mr Phil Goff gave on this Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill. I was referring to the mis-description—to put it as its most kind—the inaccuracy and the untruthfulness of this title. This bill does not create a clean slate. It instructs people to lie about their records. The records remain intact. The bill instructs Government departments to lie about the records and then it provides penalties for people who ask about criminal records. 
Mr Goff read us a tear-jerking letter from a person who many many years ago had shoplifted. Mr Goff asked why we should not have compassion for someone who offended once but has since led a blameless life. Why not indeed? Most of us do have compassion. Almost every New Zealander would tell that poor woman: “Don’t worry. You have led a blameless life. We don’t hold it against you.” And they do not. I have employed people. I have become a partner in my businesses with people who have committed offences in their youth but who have since led a blameless life. I believe that most New Zealanders do that. That is true compassion. 
But this bill I say to Mr Goff does not conceal the records of people who have offended once and since led a blameless life. This bill conceals the records of people who have offended any number of times. The average New Zealand prisoner goes to prison for the first time after committing nine offences. I tell the Minister that this bill conceals all the previous eight offences. It ceases to conceal only when people have reached their ninth offence or at least reached the point of being sent to prison. To get an average of nine offences there are probably some offenders who might have 10 or 20 offences before they go to prison. So it is not about offending once and then leading a blameless life. 
Let us look at the “blameless life” claim. This bill will conceal the record of someone who has committed any number of offences gone to Australia spent time in prison gone anywhere else in the world committed any number of offences come back and led anything but a blameless life. But if they have managed to avoid being convicted—and it does not matter how many times they have been charged—then the record gets concealed. I ask Mr Goff: where is the blameless life in that? 
Mr Goff invited the House to comment on the letter. I am commenting on the letter. I hope he will take a call and explain why it is that he is supporting a bill that claims to provide a clean slate when it does not. The Minister has claimed that the bill provides for people who have led a blameless life after one offence when it does not. There is no maximum number of offences that would disqualify a person from claiming the benefit of this bill. That provision was proposed in the Justice and Electoral Committee but the Minister’s officials I assume on instruction discouraged any of those kinds of amendments that would have made this less offensive legislation. In fact the Government has just voted against amendments that would have made this less offensive legislation. 
This bill is utterly unnecessary. There is no evidence that the people who have written to the Minister asking to have their records concealed have had what the Minister called a life sentence. How offensive that is to people in this country who are asking that a life sentence actually mean something! The Minister compares a genuine life sentence which connotes seriousness of offending and proper punishment with the fact that someone is embarrassed about a past offence. How can there be any comparison? That speaks volumes about the Labour Government’s attitude to crime and punishment and criminal justice.