Franks Stephen: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:617;Page:12778] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 It is quite good to be invited to comment. I remind Mr Tanczos—and I think he knows—that Richard Prebble took the opportunity during the first reading of one of these bills to explain what happened after he had adopted and tried to pass a bill with such passion. When the evidence came to the select committee he found that it did not sustain his fond beliefs. In fact his bill did not relate to a scheme like this. The convictions under this scheme are not spent; they remain in full force. They are simply concealed. Richard Prebble said he was sorry and had learnt from raising the matter. He said he was fully supportive of the concerns we expressed in this House about legislative encouragement to lie. 
The scheme in this bill has nothing to do with deeming or creating spent convictions; this is simply a concealment scheme. This bill lies in its very title. It is no clean slate bill. We know there is no clean slate. It provides expressly for the convictions to remain and to be brought up again the moment there is a fresh conviction. This is a bill that has been promoted with such sickening sanctimony that it is hard to deliver a speech on it without getting tendentious—without accusing people of bad faith. I do not do that. I believe that there is good intention here but there is certainly sickening sanctimony. This bill tells people to use false pretences for their own advantage. This bill tells them to lie when asked a straightforward question. This bill requires Government departments to lie when asked a similar question. 
This bill does not make an exception even for perjury. It may be highly relevant in a court case for example that someone has a criminal record; but this bill does not even say that when asked to reply on oath in court that that stands outside. This bill requires and advises people including Government departments—whether witnesses defendants or plaintiffs—to lie even in court. It goes further. It states that there is punishment for not lying. It states that a $20000 fine will apply to people in Government departments who do not facilitate the lie. It may seem ludicrous but as an illustration a priest in confession who urges someone to tell the truth irrespective of the privilege that person can get under this bill would be liable for a $10000 fine. 
Mr Darren Hughes accused me—and by implication the ACT party—of having a gloomy view of human nature. I tell him that the view of people who trust others is to allow them to forgive and forget knowing there is something to forgive and forget. It is the ACT party that believes we can trust New Zealanders not to blight the lives of the 500000 people who are now being told to lie. 
The ACT party says that 90 percent of those people have gone straight and lived down their records. They are not subject to a life sentence. They have committed a misdemeanour and have been recorded as having done so. They will probably have committed more than one offence because usually there will be some form of diversion and they will not go on one conviction but they live these down because New Zealanders are generally forgiving and compassionate. 
This bill states with all the arrogance of the left—all the sanctimony of the people who like to tell others how to live and what to do—that: “Oh they might not forgive. They might not be compassionate so we will make them compassionate by lying to them. We will make sure that the question of forgiveness or compassion does not even arise because we will make sure they don’t know.” Who has the gloomy view of human nature Mr Hughes? 
This bill is anti-morality. It says to airbrush history. That may seem funny but in recent 20th century history the Soviet Union in airbrushing history started off with all sorts of good intentions and ended up being more sinister than I care to imagine. This bill justifies and will cause an increase in punishment for crime. Every healthy social system relies on reputation and concern for reputation as the first line of sanction. 
I do not know how the Maori members in this House can stand seeing yet another attack on the concept of whakama. What Maori relied on first was a sense of shame and a concern for reputation of self and family. This bill tells people not to worry about their reputation. It says that if they offend and have not been caught for 7 years then all is gone. This bill stops the mechanism of a normal society that allows individuals to draw distinctions between people with one or two minor misdemeanours and repeat offenders. It just will not be allowed to operate. What happens is that the community wants the ability to punish wrongdoing. If reputation damage will not do it we are forced to have formal sanctions and punishments. 
This bill is also anti-Maori in another sense. Stereotypes matter. Anti-discrimination law started very insidiously stating that where there are false stereotypes where there is discrimination based on false assumptions we will ban it. What the select committee foreshadowed the logic of this bill and the speeches made on behalf of the alleged beneficiaries is that because there may be discrimination on the basis of a person’s record the Government will squelch the record and suppress it. 
But people do not simply lie down and take that kind of dictation by the Government. They make assumptions. For example we can assume from the statistics on offending that the likelihood of young Maori males having an offence record is about four or five times greater than young Pakeha males. So what will this legislation do to them? It will mean that Maori will suffer even more in terms of job opportunities. It will mean that it is rational for employers to say: “I’m not allowed to find out. I can’t draw a distinction between young Maori males who have not offended and those who have. I’ll kick for touch and won’t go near them.” 
That is what this kind of bill does and members over there who sneered at our concerns about this issue with all the sanctimony they could muster will be responsible. It will never be tracked to them but they will be responsible for the difficulty young Maori and indeed older Maori will have in getting jobs in positions where trust is required. 
Those members claimed that the bill assisted rehabilitation. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. There is evidence that there is sensible discrimination against people with prior offences. The select committee allowed officials to pull the wool over its eyes by allowing them to introduce evidence that 15 years after one conviction only 50 percent had reoffended. In other words the stereotype of prior offending being a good guide is a justified stereotype. 
Members should think about it for a moment. That was just one prior offence. If we wanted the prediction rate for three or five prior offences we would probably find that it went up a great deal more. Yet in the rhetoric they kept saying: “One little mistake many years ago.” This bill does not exclude the person who has had nine or 15 previous mistakes. This bill states that no matter what one has done no matter if one has committed murder in Australia if one has kept out of the records in New Zealand for 7 years whether by evading conviction or generally going straight one should have the benefit of the doubt. That is not giving people a second chance. That is giving people a second fifth tenth and up to twentieth chance. We know that the average person who starts a custodial sentence in this country has had nine previous convictions. 
This bill is a very poor piece of drafting and ACT will do all in its power to repeal it as soon as it has an opportunity. This bill is an instruction to lie. It is State complicity in lying and it undermines all notions of morality. It goes against freedom of speech. We had a pathetic opinion from our useless Attorney-General who told us that the bill was justified by its good intentions. There has been no examination of the mechanisms no examination of the figures that lie behind and no examination of whether any putative increase in rehabilitation rates or even recidivism rates would be matched by a much greater increase in primary offending. When people are given the impression that the State does not care about offending and are being told by law that they do not need to worry about their reputations we can expect more offending because the social sanctions are being undermined.