Curran ClareHon CLARE CURRAN (Minister of Broadcasting Communications and Digital Media): Thank you Madam Chair. I feel quite proud and humbled to take a call on this bill—such a necessary piece of legislation in the healing process which continues around the stigma that has persisted despite the 1986 piece of legislation a stigma that has been suffered by people who are being punished or have felt that they continue to be punished for being themselves by previous criminal convictions. I feel really proud of the whole of this Parliament the Parliament of New Zealand that we are taking this step.I've got some specific questions around clause 13A which was inserted at the select committee process which was around Offence to require or request that individual disregard expungement" and note again the purpose of the bill: "to reduce prejudice stigma and all other negative effects arising from the conviction for a historical homosexual offence". But the Justice Committee obviously felt concerned enough to want to insert a new clause and I don't know whether that was as a result of good work just by the select committee members thinking of all the unintended consequences or whether this came from submissions—the 37 submissions. But there was the concern that in some situations even if a conviction had been successfully expunged people might still be required to disclose the fact of the conviction. So the insertion of clause 13A makes it an explicit offence to require or request an individual to disregard the effect of expungement under this bill. So my question to the Minister in the chair Andrew Little is around the problem definition around that. Was there a set of circumstances and actual cases where there was concern that this kind of behaviour would occur? Also what would be the process for actually enacting that offence? How does it become an offence? What was the thought that went into that? I'll just remind the committee that clause 13A has two parts to it. In the first part clause 13A(1) the person commits an offence if that person "requires or requests that an individual—(a) disregard the effect of expungement under this Act when answering a question about the individual's criminal history or disclosing information concerning any convictions of the individual or both; or (b) disregard the effect of expungement under this Act …". So it sounds as if it's a blatant disregard of what this legislation actually stands for. There is concern that there is still the prejudice that exists partly in our community where there are people who would disregard and if they did then as point two states "A person commits an offence … is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10000"—what thought has gone into how that would actually be enacted and what would the recourse be because if they wanted to get their conviction expunged they have to apply—am I correct—to the Minister? So how do you actually get that offence to occur? Does it have to go through the Minister to be referred to the court or is there some other mechanism? I guess that's the question I have for the Minister in the chair on this bill. I certainly am not disagreeing with clause 13A. I think it obviously shows good thinking by the select committee members. But I just—on reading through it and of course not having been at the select committee—am unsure about how that actually played out. Other than having that question answered this is an extremely important piece of legislation. It's part of the healing process. I commend it to the committee."