Adams Paul: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
Adams Paul: Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12571] 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to speak against this bill. As we have heard many times already this bill is about lying. Unfortunately in this country we need to be more encouraging of those who would be truthful. When one is an employer and interviewing staff with all the responsibilities that employers have now it will be criminal that we can ask a straight question of a person standing before us applying for a job and that person will now be legally entitled to lie under the bill. 
What I have learnt about lying—and I am sure that we all would have lied over the years—is that the more one does it the easier it becomes. If we are going to encourage people to lie about a criminal conviction it will then be far easier for those people to lie about most other areas in their lives. Yet as a father with young children if I can teach my children to tell the truth and show them that by telling the truth they will be adequately rewarded we will build a far better society. 
As an employer I would have absolutely no problem at all with interviewing a person of about 25 or 30 years of age and asking that person whether he or she had any criminal convictions. If that person explained to me that 7 or 8 years ago in his or her teenage years he or she had committed a misdemeanour and had a criminal conviction I would be far more likely to employ that person because I could see he or she was telling me the truth and had regretted the incident. 
Let us face it incidents have happened in all of our lives that we have regretted but we have learnt by our mistakes. I would not be one to punish those people for the mistakes they have made because there would not be any member here who has not made mistakes in life. However when we as a Government try to put in legislation that will encourage people to tell an untruth I really wonder where we as a nation are going and I will stand against it with everything we have. 
I see in the bill that no certificate will be issued confirming that a person’s old convictions are to be concealed. Therefore if a person who has had major convictions comes before me in a work situation and says: “No I have no criminal convictions.” as an employer my question to the House is what grounds would I have to check on whether that person was telling me the truth or a lie. Of course if that person is telling me a lie how different is he or she to the person who has a clean-slate record? Is that person not also telling me a lie? 
What is the problem? Will the big lie be the problem instead of the little lie? Get real! We are getting too far away from common sense here for me. The truth is the truth. If people tell the truth No. 1 they do not have to remember what they said because it is the truth. But if one tells a lie to a person who happens to know another person and one does not know that they know each other and that person tells the other person what he or she was told one starts as they say to smell a rat and ask: “What is going on here?” So I have major concerns with areas like that. 
Trust must be built back into society. Trust must be built between the people who are employing and those who are being employed even on a voluntary basis. Whether it is voluntary employment in a day-care centre or wherever employers must have trust that when they ask a straight question they will get a straight answer. So when we bring forth legislation that no longer allows that and employers interviewing people know that there is an element of society out there that has been given legal permission to lie I certainly have great concerns about that. United Future will not be supporting this bill.