Franks Stephen: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Second Reading 
Franks Stephen: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:614;Page:10345] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 Just in case any people listening to the debate are not otherwise aware of it I want to commence by reading a chunk of the Labour and Green majority report on the bill: “Labour and Green members encourage the Human Rights Commission to consider including discrimination on the basis of unrelated or irrelevant criminal convictions in its review of the grounds for discrimination in the Human Rights Act 1993. These members further recommend the Government incorporates the recommendations of the National Plan of Action on Human Rights into the Human Rights Act.” We have not seen the national plan of action but of course that does not stop the Labour and Green members from saying it must be a good thing and to make it law. 
Does it speak for itself only to the National Party United Future New Zealand First and ACT that the idea of making it unlawful to discriminate—in other words to draw distinctions on the basis of whether a person has a criminal conviction—must be about the most gross violation of the human right of freedom of association that one could imagine? Here is a Government that cannot enforce old-fashioned criminal law here is a Government whose police do not bother to turn up to burglaries and here is a Government that cannot even prosecute fraudsters rapists and burglars within a year. Yet here is a Government that says: “Let’s make a new offence of someone daring to say that he or she would rather not associate with a criminal when there is a choice.” Here is a Government whose members—Mr Darren Hughes and Mr Damien O’Connor—stand up and say: “We think New Zealanders should be forgiving and merciful. And just in case they aren’t we will make sure they don’t know who needs forgiveness and whom to show mercy to.” 
The select committee heard that there are somewhere between 500000 and 600000 people to whom this bill might apply. Somewhere between 500000 and 600000 people have convictions that will be suppressed under this law. The members tried to persuade us that this is a pressing social need; that those 500000 to 600000 people had their lives blighted because New Zealanders were free to choose to decide whether they had outlived their earlier offences. This Government decides: “No no we will not leave ordinary New Zealanders with that choice—they might choose wrongly. We will make sure they don’t know who has offended and who has not and in that way we can pretend that we are merciful and forgiving.” This is the Government saying as socialists usually do that it does not trust the good intentions of ordinary folk and that it does not trust the judgment of ordinary New Zealanders. Instead the Government will make sure that New Zealanders do not know who has convictions. That is what the Government will do. 
 Who will be the first beneficiaries of this? The one obvious group that will not benefit is the group whose members are believed in popular expectation to be likely offenders. What happens when one cannot get at the truth? Any ordinary New Zealander makes some assumptions and what will the most likely assumption be? It will be that anyone who is Maori is probably an offender—“I’m not allowed to ask about their record. I cannot find out whether they are offenders. Let us just assume they are and discriminate against Maori.” That is the obvious real effect of a law like this not the putrid rhetoric we have just had about the 50-year-old woman who is worried that her shoplifting offence years earlier is going to blight her life. No person in this country who is convicted of a single offence has his or her life seriously blighted. The fact that there are 500000 such people whom none of us know or care about is evidence of that. 
This dishonesty on the part of the select committee majority this misuse of not just rhetoric but statistics appears on page 29 of the report on this bill in the table headed “Percentage of people given a non-custodial sentence ... who were not reconvicted in each of the next 15 years”. In year 7 we see that only 32 percent of those aged 10-17 were not reconvicted after 7 years and that 41 percent of 18 to 19-year-olds were not reconvicted and then we get up to the really impressive figure that 72 percent of people aged 40-plus were not reconvicted. But what the table does not tell us is how many were reconvicted after two previous offences. This is not a bill about second chances; this is a bill about fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth and ninth chances. The average number of convictions of an offender in New Zealand before he or she first goes to jail is nine. The average offender has to be convicted nine times before he or she does not get the benefit of this bill. This bill will suppress the convictions of people who have offended eight times which is an absolute pattern. If there is one thing we do know it is that the very best predictor of future offending is a pattern of past offending. A single offence may not be the pest predictor but that is not what this bill says. This bill does not say people get a second chance; this bill says they get nine second chances. 
And this Government masquerades as a Government that wants to be merciful. This is a Government that is condemning thousands of New Zealanders with absolutely clean records to the suspicion of having criminal records. This is the Government that will now charge a priest a $10000 fine for daring to urge a parishioner to obey the Bible and tell the truth instead of obeying the Government and telling a lie. This is the Government that puts in the bill a $10000 fine for a would-be fiancée who asks her intended: “What were you doing with those scumbags? Are you sure you have not been convicted? Please tell me the truth.” This is the Government that says: “Here is a warrant to lie and we will pretend your offences never happened.” What about people looking for a flatmate who have just been ripped off and do not want someone who has been a criminal? They want to try to get some objective information but no that is illegal. 
The Government has exempted the criminal justice and security systems but not the medical system and not teaching. Even Nandor Tanczos wanted to make sure that schools could ask about the previous convictions of schoolteachers and childcare workers. But no in this great rush of enthusiasm the members opposite—who actually do not believe in social sanctions; who do not believe that people left alone can organise their lives; who do believe that only when the Government makes people do things can one get virtue and generosity of spirit—have decided that the education system can do without truth that it can just lump it that it can take the risk that we are putting teachers in there who have 20 previous convictions as long as they got away with not being convicted for the last 7 years. Members should think about it: it does not mean that a person has not offended; a person could have been a paedophile in Australia or could have been out of the country for 6½ of those 7 years. There is nothing this bill can do about that—if a person has no criminal record in New Zealand for the last 7 years all previous offences are expunged. This is a wicked piece of law. 
This bill started with Mr Goff in all his vein-popping glory trying to outbid Nandor Tanczos for the “yoof” vote. So Mr Goff who is there to be tough on crime is now colluding with criminals who may have any number of prior offences to suppress their records. This bill is about Labour colluding because it still believes that there is a class struggle and that criminals are not really responsible for what they do—they are victims of class oppression to be pitied and helped by the rest of the community and if the rest of the community does not want to do that Labour will make it. That is the Labour approach. That is what Mr Darren Hughes has bought into. That is what Mr Darren Hughes so proudly told us was his achievement. Of course young Mr Darren Hughes is competing with Nandor Tanczos for the “yoof” vote too. He is going for it by suppressing the criminal records of people who might have enough offences for anyone to know that future offending is likely. 
This bill is about forcing us into ignorance. This bill is not about rehabilitation. It will hurt the people who should have expected to be helped by it. The well-connected can still find out about one’s criminal record because at least until the human rights law is changed one can go back through newspapers or one can get a private detective to find out about a record. The people who really need to know and who have the money will still find out about one’s previous record—or they just will not give an unpromising person a chance. I say to members that this is a disgraceful piece of law.