John MacDonald: Fix the Clean Slate law or get rid of it?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

How do you feel about people being allowed to hide their convictions?

There are two ways of doing it. 1) Just don’t tell people about it. Or use the clean slate legislation, which wipes your record clean if you’ve had no convictions for seven years.

If you’ve been to prison for your offences though, you don’t qualify.

Concerns about the legislation are being raised after an Auckland man with historical indecency convictions was able to pass multiple police checks, become registered as a teacher, and abuse nine girls.

Which has law expert Bill Hodge saying that the law needs an overhaul.

But I think we would be better off getting rid of it. Because the bigger picture here is whether we think someone should be able to hide their convictions after a certain period of time so they can get on with their life without it hanging over them.

I think there should be complete transparency, and here’s why:

If you’re an employer, under our health and safety laws, you are responsible for the safety of anyone and everyone working for you. To do that, you need to be confident that you are bringing people into your business or your organisation who are of, what they call, “good character”.

How can you do that if there are things about someone you don’t know? Things like past criminal convictions?

Remembering too that the convictions we’re talking about here aren’t things like murder. But let’s say, for example, someone was a menace on the roads when they were younger and had numerous convictions because of that.

Seven years down the track, would you want to know about that if you were looking at giving them a job? I would.

What about someone who had convictions for violence that weren’t quite serious enough for them to end up in prison? Someone who had a history of going out on a Saturday night and getting lippy in the pub?

Seven years down the track, would you want to know about that if you were looking at giving them a job? I would.

Dishonesty convictions? You’d want to know about those too, wouldn’t you?

Imagine how better that would be for the person with the convictions, as well? Everything would be out in the open, there’d be no fear of people finding out through word-of-mouth and the problems that would create.

I’m all for giving people a second chance, but only if all of the cards are on the table.

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