Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill

I move, That the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the bill. I also move, That this House apologise to those homosexual New Zealanders who were convicted for consensual adult activity, and recognise the tremendous hurt and suffering those men and their families have gone through, and the continued effects the convictions have had on them. Today we are putting on the record that this House deeply regrets the hurt and stigma suffered by the many hundreds of New Zealand men who were turned into criminals by a law that was profoundly wrong, and for that we are sorry. We are acknowledging that these men should never have been burdened with criminal convictions, and we are recognising the continued effects that the convictions have had on their lives and the lives of their families. New Zealand has a proud reputation for fairness, freedom, and diversity. It is unimaginable today that we would criminalise consensual sexual activity between adults.

Almost 4 years ago this Parliament passed the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act 2013 to allow same-sex couples to legally marry, and I was proud to vote in favour of it. Today is another historic day for the New Zealand gay community and their families as Parliament formally apologises for the hurt caused by the convictions and takes the first reading of a bill to expunge those convictions. It is never too late to apologise. While we cannot ever erase the injustice, this apology is a symbolic but an important act that we hope will help address the harm and right this historic wrong.

The Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 decriminalised sexual conduct between consenting males aged 16 and older. The right to be free from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was later recognised in the Human Rights Act 1993. However, convictions for those offences remain on record. This means that they can appear in criminal history checks, and those New Zealanders continue to be tainted with the stigma that such convictions carry.

This bill seeks to address the ongoing stigma, prejudice, and other negative effects arising from a conviction for a historical homosexual offence by creating a statutory scheme for a convicted person, or a representative on their behalf if that person is deceased, to apply for the conviction to be expunged. This is the first expungement scheme ever to be created in New Zealand, reflecting the uniqueness of the situation. I cannot think of any other situation where a Government in this country would seek to rewrite criminal histories based on changes in societal views.

It is clear that the laws under which the men affected were convicted have not represented the views of most New Zealanders for many years, and it is right that we now formally recognise that. While it is impossible to know the exact numbers, it is estimated that around a thousand people may be eligible to apply under the scheme. This is based on analysis of conviction data published by the then Department of Statistics on people convicted of indecency between males, which was the most common offence prosecuted between 1965 and 1986.

The bill provides that the Secretary for Justice will be the decision maker in expungement applications. The secretary will determine, on the balance of probabilities, whether the application meets the test for expungement. If the application is successful, the conviction will not appear on a criminal history check, and the person will not be required to disclose information about the expunged conviction for any purpose. It will be as if they were never convicted. They will be free to apply for an expungement, and the test will be that the conduct constituting the offence would not be an offence under today’s law. This test is necessary to ensure that historical convictions are not expunged if the conduct was non-consensual or the parties were not of legal age—in other words, if the behaviour would still be considered criminal today.

Five historical homosexual offences are covered by this bill. These include offences under the Crimes Act 1961 that were repealed by the Homosexual Law Reform Act of 1986, and the predecessors of those offences under the Crimes Act 1908. The offences involve those of indecency between males, sodomy, and the keeping of places of resort for homosexual acts. The scheme will be open to applications from people with historical convictions for offences relating to sexual conduct between consenting men. If the person is deceased, a representative such as a family member or partner will be able to make the application on their behalf.

The primary obligation to provide information in support of an application will fall on the applicant, and the Secretary for Justice will be able to obtain any further information he or she considers necessary to make a proper assessment of the application. The applicant will not be required to make any appearance in person, nor will the fact of the application be made public, to protect the privacy of those involved.

The bill is modelled on a number of schemes in Australian states, England, and Wales. The New Zealand scheme is more closely aligned with those in Australian states, where people can apply to have their convictions disregarded. It would not be appropriate to go further and create a blanket pardon for all historical convictions for homosexual offences. It is possible that people convicted under the repealed offences would have been convicted for conduct that is still illegal today—for example, if the activities concerned were not consensual. A case by case assessment of the facts of each case is therefore necessary to clarify whether the conduct would be lawful under the current law.

The bill relies on an application by the affected person or their representative, because not every convicted person will want an investigation into the history of their conviction. There is a need to respect the privacy of those who choose, for whatever reason, not to pursue the option of having a conviction expunged. In addition, there will be real limitations on the ability to investigate a case without the cooperation of the affected person, as they will often be the primary source of information for the decision maker.

Let me once again acknowledge the enormous pain that the New Zealanders affected by these convictions have lived with. It is my hope that this bill and Parliament’s apology will go some way towards addressing that. As well as acting to once and for all remove the taint and the label of criminality, we want, by these actions, to formally acknowledge and put on record both the hurt and the damage caused, and the fact that those convictions should not have occurred. I proudly commend the bill to the House.

Waiata

I want to thank the Minister of Justice for her motion and the bill that she is bringing before the House today, and for her personal leadership in bringing this important matter before us. It is hard, from a perspective of 2017, to comprehend a world in which it was a crime for two adult men to love one another. It is harder still to imagine the feelings of anxiety, fear, despair, and depression that such a law engendered.

I cannot say it better than one of the submitters on Wiremu Demchick’s petition. He quoted a man whose conviction forced him to resign from the army. These are his words: “This conviction still leads, after 53 years, to self-hatred, worthlessness, unjustified guilt and shame. To relieve the anguish and pain, chronic drinking and self-destruction took control over the next 10-15 years, until the realization that I wasn’t a two headed monster, and there were many others like me throughout the world.” He goes on: “I love my country, but live in fear of being ‘found out’, of further humiliation, panic attacks when I see a uniformed police officer, and a general feeling of being unworthy to be myself, something few others would understand. Should this petition be … approved, it would allow me at this late point in my life to respect myself, and feel some dignity in my final years.” We owe him and thousands like him not just an apology but our respect and a sense of dignity. This apology and this bill begin to do that.

Two weekends ago I had the honour of attending a service to mark the 50th anniversary of the delivery of a sermon by Rev. Godfrey Wilson, at St Peter’s Church on Willis Street in June 1967, highlighting the treatment of homosexuals. It was a radical call for acceptance and inclusion at that time. The core of the sermon was about a man named John, who is met by a prison chaplain. John is an able person and intelligent. He works in a bank, but he is now in prison. He had found love with Colin and they had moved into a flat together. It was not easy. There were tensions and quarrels, but there was also love. After being together a year, the landlord gave them notice. Another tenant had complained about pansies in the building. In the stress that followed, the relationship between John and Colin ended. John became depressed and his life spiralled down until he was imprisoned for 12 months for his homosexual activities. John said to the chaplain: “If you fall in love and marry, that’s fine. But if I fall in love and want to share it, that’s perversion and must be persecuted and punished. Do you wonder that I have thought of suicide? What is there for me? Who cares about me?”.

Let us be clear. The illegality of homosexuality, the arrests and the imprisonments, and the fear of that happening did not just ruin lives and destroy potential; it killed people. Hundreds, or possibly thousands, of lives have been lost because men could not bear the shame, the stigma, and the hurt caused by this Parliament and the way that society viewed them as criminals. It is for all of that that we must apologise, as a Government and as a Parliament, to those men who are still alive and to those who have passed on and their families. To those families, it is important that you take the opportunity afforded by this legislation to give dignity in death to your relatives that this Parliament did not allow them in life.

I also want to speak today to those gay men who were not convicted in this period, but, rather, lived through it in the face of discrimination, in the face of hate, and in the face of stigma. We also owe all of you an apology. Whether you were convicted or not, this law was wrong and made your lives worse. I want to salute the bravery and courage of all of those homosexual men who lived through that, and then protested and brought that to the attention of the world. I think of those gay men who, in 1986, signed a letter in the New Zealand Herald that put their names to their sexuality and put at risk their lives and their careers. That bravery and courage should be acknowledged today as well.

On a personal note, to all those men, I add my apology, but I want to do more than that. I want to say that I respect you, I honour you, and I stand on your shoulders today. The fact that I, as a gay man, can be out and proud and a member of Parliament is but a small tribute to you. But, more than that, next year Alf and I will celebrate 20 years of being together and, early the next year, 10 years of our civil union, and next week we will get to look after our grandchildren in the school holidays. Those are all things that would have been unimaginable to you, yet they are your legacy. We owe to you as well that we will continue to fight for inclusion and fairness for all in our society.

Turning to the bill itself, in the last 30 years much has been achieved, from homosexual law reform to the Human Rights Act, civil unions, and marriage equality, and it was right that those things were done, but now is the right time to make this wrong right and expunge for all time those unwarranted and hurtful convictions. Creating a process to do this is going to be difficult. Other countries and jurisdictions have grappled with how to make this work. I look forward to a select committee process on this bill that finds a process that is as fair and as quick as it can be.

In the UK they have found categories of convictions that are easily identifiable as simply being the result of lewd conduct. I acknowledge in New Zealand it is not as easy to separate that out, and we need look no further than the life of one of our greatest authors, Frank Sargeson, for this. Frank began life as Norris Davey, a gay man. Norris had a number of casual relationships with men, and in the late 1920s in Wellington, he went home with another man named Leonard Hollobon. Police had been monitoring Mr Hollobon, and burst into his room when he and Frank were in bed together. They were arrested for committing indecent assault. They were, of course, not, but, rather, they were two consenting adults. In any event, in return for a suspended sentence, Frank was convinced to testify that he was an innocent party, whereas Mr Hollobon got 5 years’ hard labour at New Plymouth Prison. How on earth do we untangle cases such as this where everything is not as it appears? I think the committee will need to work hard to find a process that is not unnecessarily burdensome and that in it has an element of trust in those who survived and their families.

I wanted, in my final period of time, to look towards the future. The other issue that the committee is going to have to deal with is that of compensation. This is a fraught issue. I know that in other countries—particularly in Germany, in just the last few weeks—they have established systems of compensation. I encourage the committee to look carefully at this issue to see what is possible and to even consider the option of being a little creative about the possibility of using some form of funding and money to support those who come out today, and those who grapple with their gender identity today, because what we should do on this occasion today is not just apologise for the wrongs of the past but make a commitment to take the journey from our current tolerance of difference and diversity to one of acceptance, embracing and celebrating diversity.

For all of the legislation that we have passed and the opportunities we have created, we are not there yet, because even today the shame and hurt of being different from the majority still exists. Young people are still given the message that being who they are and simply being in love is something that the rest of society is tolerating, putting up with, or allowing. That is not good enough. Today not just gay men but lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and all the colours of the rainbow need to know that we love them for who they are and the rich and amazing contributions that they make. Today is a day to celebrate progress, but if there is chance to make right that wrong of the past, we must give the ultimate legacy of a country that includes, embraces, and cares for all our people.

E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o Te Whare Pāremata o Aotearoa. In speaking to the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill, I want to begin by thanking the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, Sarah Dowie, for yielding to me what would be, traditionally, her call in this debate. As the first openly gay member of the National caucus, I am very proud that it is a National Government that has taken this step to do the right thing and to make some amends for these historic wrongs that we are discussing today.

I want also to observe that it is a very strong female Minister of Justice who follows in a strong tradition of female members who have brought justice and clarity in these regards. I am talking, of course, about Dame Fran Wilde, who was the driving force behind decriminalisation in the 1980s. I am talking about the Hon Katherine O’Regan, who, as Associate Minister of Health, made the crucial contribution that saw discrimination against people on the basis of sexuality being made illegal in 1993. I also acknowledge across the aisle in the House today Louisa Wall, whose bill brought in marriage equality. Today the Hon Amy Adams, as Minister of Justice, is seeking to expunge the criminal records of those who apply for it, in what I think is a very important piece of legislation.

Grant Robertson—who said nothing I disagree with in his speech; it is the first time ever, probably, in this House—observed that in the past, people were stigmatised, not just those who were convicted of offences but the entire LGBT community, and that by passing this legislation we may actually give dignity to those people. Well, I actually think it will also restore dignity to this House.

I am a very proud supporter of our relationship with the United Kingdom. We inherited much that is good from our colonial and imperial forebears, but the persecution of gay men, in particular, was one of those things that we inherited through our Crimes Act. It was embedded by an Act of this Parliament in 1908, and further embedded in 1961, and, frankly, in my view, those were measures that actually brought shame upon this House and diminished our mana as a legislature that should have pride in being fair-minded, in treating people equally, and in supporting a country that values diversity. I think in considering this bill today, we are going some way to restoring mana to this House that might otherwise have been diminished by those steps in the past.

This is not just a theoretical or symbolic measure; it will have a practical effect for a number of New Zealanders. Last year I met a gentleman who had a historical conviction for homosexual offences and who is a teacher. He is still a teacher. He is in his 60s now, and every 5 years he has to renew his teaching certificate with the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, or, previously, the Teachers Council. This is a gentleman who has to, on a 5-yearly basis, explain to whomever is his principal at the time why his criminal record comes back from the Ministry of Justice with a historical sexual offence listed. This is embarrassing and upsetting for him, and, obviously, a cause for concern in any school when it is going through the proper process of verifying that its teachers are safe people to have around young New Zealanders, our children of this country. This is an example of a real person who, through the passage of this bill and once his application is processed, will not face that unnecessary stigma that he has to live with today.

I think there are some challenges involved in this. We on the Justice and Electoral Committee had the advantage of visiting Sydney and discussing with the justice officials of the state of New South Wales the process it went through when it considered its version of this bill. But I think those issues can easily be overcome through the hard-working efforts of the Justice and Electoral Committee.

This bill fixes, or at least gives some redress to, a real issue for several hundred New Zealanders who are still affected by these historical convictions. It also sends, I think, a powerful message to our LGBT community in New Zealand—particularly the younger members of that community—that they are valued, that their lives are worthwhile, that we as a Parliament do care, that we want to see every New Zealander treated fairly, and that we want to right the wrongs of the past. I think it is an excellent bill. I commend my colleague the Hon Amy Adams for getting it through to this point, and I hope it will be passed unopposed in this House. Thank you.

This is a red-letter day. It is a day that is both noteworthy and will be memorable for many—memorable for gay men persecuted and prosecuted for having consensual sex with another man, and for men who were isolated and alienated and were forced to seek relationships in places like public toilets, in secrecy and in fear. This day will be memorable for family and friends who have waited since the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill on 11 July 1986—31 years on. It is 31 years since a politician in this House told gay men to go back to the sewers where they belonged, and 31 years since consensual sex stopped being a criminal offence with terms of imprisonment.

There are very few of us left in this House today who supported homosexual law reform back in 1986. It is so much easier now, I have to say. Trevor Mallard, Peter Dunne, and I are the last remaining members who voted for that bill. I also want to acknowledge Ruth Dyson, who did a lot of work for this bill, working for Fran Wilde. She was stuck in Fran’s house for week after week, working on submissions.

For members today, it is hard to imagine the fierceness of the debate of the time. There was month after month of foul rhetoric and intense pressure put on members of Parliament not to vote for the bill. There were the threats and the months of filibuster by the opponents. I was a new member of Parliament in a rural seat in New Zealand—the seat of Horowhenua—and I was told that if I voted for homosexual law reform, I would lose my seat. In fact, at the following election, I increased my majority.

I want to commend the courage of the campaigners for reform from before the Homosexual Law Reform Bill was passed right through to today. They are our heroes. They were on the streets. They campaigned, they petitioned, and they never stopped. Today, knowing that Fran Wilde is not in New Zealand at the moment, I want to commend her courage. She was perhaps the most courageous member of Parliament whom I have ever met.

So, on 11 July 1986, a bill was passed. The war was won, but not the battle. That is taking longer. There are still human rights to be addressed, and I just want to mention one particular group: transsexual people and transgender people. I think there is still too much discrimination and too much stigmatisation of this very vulnerable group, and I look forward to when we can remove that discrimination for these people as well.

I commend the Minister for bringing the bill and the apology to this House. I hope that it was a report that I sent to her—which I am going to read part of in a moment—from one of my constituents that led her to change her mind about having an expunging bill, because she did write to me in April last year saying that she had no plans to have such a bill. I sent her a signed statement from a constituent who has been visiting me since 1998, and I have to say that since 1998, I have been advocating for there to be such a bill. I am sorry that we could not, and did not, in our clean slate bill of 2004 include such a provision, because between 1980 and 1986, the Ministry of Justice shows that just in that small period alone there were 879 convictions for men who had consensual sex with men.

My constituent came to me once again 18 months ago, and I said: “Put down exactly what you went through, and I will give it to the Minister.” We both signed the statement. I am not going to identify my constituent, and I am not going to read all of it, but I want you to hear this part: “I met X at the end of 1968 when I was 18 years old, in my first year at university. I had known for several years that I was gay, and we began a relationship and I frequently stayed overnight in his flat. An ex-flatmate informed the police that we were queers. That night we went to bed and we were woken at 5 a.m. by a torch being flashed in our faces and being gruffly told by two male police officers to get out of bed. We were arrested and taken to the police station.

“The end result was X and I were charged and convicted of indecent assault on each other, and we were sentenced to 18 months’ probation. We were directed by the magistrate to never see each other again, to report regularly to the CIB office, and to take psychiatric help as directed. I was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where I was psychoanalysed, and after 2 weeks I was told by the psychologist that I was more sane than most people outside. But my self-esteem had been shattered. I was very upset, and my parents were troubled by the arrest.

“Because of the deep embarrassment I have felt about the conviction, I have never travelled to a country which would require a visa. I have never worked overseas, which I would very much like to do. I have had no other convictions since 1969. It may seem strange to somebody who has not experienced this, but I feel I am haunted by it. I think about it every day. Every night I spend time locking doors and windows before I go to bed to ensure no intruder will enter again while I am asleep.

“I have never told anybody, but at times I feel unworthy, wondering what people would say about somebody if they knew about the charge ‘indecent assault on a male” and not understanding what really happened. For 28 years I did not feel able to discuss it with anybody, except two friends.”

This has been signed by my constituent but also by his lover at the time, and I hope that this bill will expunge this man’s conviction, because that is what it must do. I am not saying it is going to be easy, because there is a process that must be gone through and there is going to be a decision made by somebody else that it has to be expunged, but I hope that we are on the right track with this bill.

I also applaud the apology. It is a very fulsome apology. I would just put one little note in here. I found it sort of ironic that on the day of this apology, the Deputy Prime Minister has said she does not believe in mass apologies and she thinks only of individual ones when it comes to those who are asking for help and who have been discriminated against in institutions.

But this is, I say to Minister Amy Adams, a very good apology, and we are a generous people. We have apologised before. A Labour Government apologised to the Chinese in New Zealand, who were forced to pay a poll tax because they were Chinese. We apologised to Samoa for the suppression of its nationalistic movement when it was under our rule. We have apologised for other things. We are a generous people.

This is an apology that is long overdue. I know that it will be welcomed by so many people. I certainly welcome it, and in my dying days of being in this Parliament I am just so pleased to see that we have such an apology and a bill to finish this part of what has been discrimination over so many decades—in fact, generations. So I commend the Minister, and I commend this House and hope that every member of it will vote for the bill and support the apology. The people who have suffered for so long deserve nothing less.

It truly is an honour and a privilege to rise in support of this motion of apology and in favour of the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill in its first reading. The significance of this day is not lost on me. It is significant for New Zealand. It is significant for the LGBT community, and it goes to start the process of healing, to start overcoming some of the hurt that these men have experienced and some of the prejudice that these men have experienced. They were consenting adults but were convicted of a crime.

Quite frankly, I cannot imagine a New Zealand back in the day when, if you were a consenting adult, you could not love a person because they were the same sex or they may have been from a different race, or whatever the prejudice may have been. I certainly cannot imagine a New Zealand back in those times. To live through that must have been incredibly distressing, to be punished for it must have been horrific, and the ramifications of such convictions must have been life changing as those men walked through life. But, as I said, this is a significant day for New Zealand, for the LGBT community, and for this House as we start to right the wrongs of the past and move forward.

I am very, very pleased to be the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, to lead this process as we do so, and I want to pay tribute to the Justice and Electoral Committee members, who have heard from Wiremu Demchick, the petitioner who called for this very subject to be investigated—for us as a committee, too, to visit Australia to look at their expungement schemes on this issue, to compare and contrast. I feel that our collegial committee is best placed to start looking at the issues of these schemes, to look at the advantages and disadvantages, to look at the evidence on the papers, to look at evidence on the balance of probabilities, and to look at some of the old offences that some of these men were charged with, and see what that would bring about and what that would look like as a final scheme for expungement. I feel that we are best placed to debate that fairly and to look at that in an analytical way, to bring about the best result for these people, who have been subjected to this prejudice, which we all know is, as I said before, distressing and quite wrong.

So I look forward to this bill coming to our select committee. I look forward to us calling for submissions, including what the petitioner has brought to our committee by way of information, and processing them and working collegially to get the best result for these people and for New Zealand moving forward. As such, again, I say it is a significant day for New Zealand and the LGBT community, and I commend this bill to the House.

It is a huge honour for me to be able to stand and speak in support of this legislation today, and I want to start by acknowledging the community presence here today—hi. I know it was organised at late notice on a work day, but I think it signifies the importance of this to all of us in the community. I think you do honour to our elders, whom we are acknowledging today, and also we are recognising that the shame that they have been carrying has been felt by all of us. So thank you for being here, and for your waiata.

I also want to specifically thank Wiremu Demchick and the campaign to pardon gays in Aotearoa. He presented the Green Party MP Kevin Hague with the petition that was the immediate catalyst for this apology and the expungement that will follow—well done, you.

It was not a matter of chance, I suspect, that Kevin received the petition, considering the Greens had always voted unanimously in support of progressive LGBTIQA legislation, and it is also, I assume, because Kevin was an out gay man in the 1980s, living under the cloud of these oppressive laws and campaigning for decriminalisation. He was one of those men who put his life at risk for this campaign and for our collective well-being. Kevin—who, sadly, is not able to be here today because he is no longer in Parliament—asked me to let people know that he is watching, and he asked me to acknowledge the work of Jen Lawless, Rhydian Thomas, and Sam Carter, who worked in his office assisting with the set-up of this petition as it went along.

Today’s apology to the bisexual and gay men convicted for consensual adult activities is a statement from this Parliament. It was the parliaments in 1905 and 1961 that introduced, or legalised, homophobia. Those laws overrode indigenous laws, which held that both same attraction practices and people and diverse gender expression were natural. That was the status quo before the Government introduced legislation to introduce homophobia. Parliament passed the laws that made these men and so many others outlaws, so it is appropriate that we collectively apologise.

On the petition, the Justice and Electoral Committee heard from men whose lives were ruined by these laws and heard their experiences of being convicted. We heard of men whose lives were made small when they could have been huge, because of these convictions. We heard of people isolated and stigmatised and beaten and abused because of these laws and these convictions, and we know that people died as a result of this homophobia. Surely, this legislation supported the legitimisation of seeing homosexuality as a mental illness, which saw gay people being institutionalised and subjected to ECT throughout the 1960s and 1970s. We know that through the same period when men were being sent to jail, they were also being institutionalised, tied up and drugged, and given electrocution through the State’s institutionalised homophobia.

We need to acknowledge the harm that has been created before we can undo it, and that is a lesson that I hope this Parliament sits and absorbs, because it goes beyond this piece of legislation. We need to consider that in many other contexts, and we are being asked to at the moment.

To those men who were criminalised and irreparably hurt and who have been left, in the words of one submitter, with “self-hatred, worthlessness, unjustified guilt and shame”, I want to say clearly, on behalf of the Green Party, that the shame does not belong with you. The shame belongs with this Parliament and our society for robbing you of your inherent and inalienable rights. We cannot undo the damage, but we have listened and heard. We hope that today represents another step towards healing for you.

I also hope this House and our country take today as a moment to reflect. There is still much work to do to eliminate the prejudice, fear, and hatred that these laws established and embedded in our society. Surely, the impact of these laws can be the only explanation for the failure of successive Governments to ensure access to healthcare for trans people, for the failure to ensure our young people are not made invisible in our schools, and for the failure to ensure the basic safety of our children at school. This Parliament still does not seem to have absorbed the fact that, actually, we still seem to carry a sense of shame associated with our existence because of these laws. We still need to unpack that, dissociate from that shame, and embrace our diversity in this country, because we would all be better off for it.

In the final minutes that I have, I want to address the specific provisions in this bill. The bill will create a system where men convicted of indecency between males, of sodomy, or of keeping places of resort for homosexual activities can apply in writing to the Secretary of Justice to have their criminal record expunged. Families of convicted people will also be able to apply on their behalf, and I hope that through the select committee process we will have a chance to consider whether the definition of a “family” in that sense needs to be a biological family or our sense of family to be able to apply for our brothers who might not still be with us.

I do want to acknowledge that this was not what Wiremu Demchick and the petitioners were hoping for. They were hoping that there would be proactive action taken by the State to review all of the cases and pardon those who were eligible and that it would not be reliant on people applying for this. I do want to acknowledge that. The evidence from the officials was that they considered that proactively identifying people with convictions would probably be too expensive and might be re-traumatising for the people involved. For the Greens—always—the test of whether something is going to be re-traumatising is to ask. You know, I think that is really the best test, and it would have been ideal to be able to check that out a little more thoroughly.

I am not sure whether this has ended up exactly on the right side of it, but this is a good first step. I do want to acknowledge that the Minister of Justice initially said it would be too hard to even do this because these convictions were tied up with offences like child abuse and other terrible sex offences, and it was great to hear the petitioners clearly saying: “That is the reason to do this, because our people”—our family members—“have been lumped in with people who committed grievous harm against others, just for being themselves.”

On that note, again, I say the shame does not belong with you. This is the start of more work to unpack that shame for all of us. Kia ora.

New Zealand First fully supports the motion for an apology, and I would like to thank Minister Adams for being willing to give it on behalf of the whole Parliament and also for the way in which she expressed it. New Zealand First also supports the bill in its entirety.

Convictions for homosexual offences, except for those involving minors under 16 and except for those involving genuine public order offences, were based on bad law—law that was contrary to natural reason, law that was contrary to natural law. They were evil laws with tragic effects for those who suffered the convictions under them. Those laws and the convictions pursuant to them were, and still are, an utter disgrace, and they were a fundamental and extreme breach of human rights. That is now, of course, confirmed under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, the apology is very well-deserved and grossly overdue, but, as the Minister said, it is never too late to apologise, and today we are seeing that happening. But it is, of course, too late to avoid the massive damage caused by those evil laws. By the apology and through this bill, we will address at least some of that, but certainly not all of it.

The bill itself is very welcome because it enables an application for expungement through the Secretary for Justice by an eligible person, not only for a living person but also—and I think this is very important—by the personal representative of a deceased person. I think that post-mortem expungement is just as important—in fact, maybe even, in some ways, more important—as that on behalf of living persons. The basis of the test for expungement is that the conduct constituting the offence would not constitute an offence under the law of New Zealand right now, today. I think that is the appropriate way to deal with it.

I want to mention what I think are the three main values for this bill and what it achieves. The first is this: it reconfirms the freedom of people to lawfully express their sexuality and to be free from prejudice and legal sanction for doing so—it reconfirms that.

Secondly, it avoids the huge disadvantage of a person suffering such a conviction from being required to disclose that conviction for employment purposes and other such purposes, and, of course, there is the whole issue of criminal history checks as well. A conviction of this kind, as we know, can hugely limit a person’s opportunities for employment, and I think it is worth just reading out clause 9(5): “Any criminal record of the expunged conviction, or the non-disclosure of any criminal record of the expunged conviction, is not a proper ground for—(a) refusing the convicted person any appointment, post, status, or privilege; or (b) revoking any appointment, status, or privilege held by the convicted person, or dismissing the convicted person from any post.” I think that sums it up very well indeed.

The third of those values that I spoke of is this, and it is the most important one of all: it restores self-esteem and enhances the mental health and the self-worth of the people who suffered those terrible convictions. As we all know, many suicides will have resulted from that, and I hope that finally we will see an end of that sort of tragic consequence of those evil laws.

What the bill itself actually does—for those who are not aware—is, if a person’s application is approved under the scheme, then, firstly, the person’s criminal record will be amended to ensure the conviction does not appear on a criminal history check for any purpose in New Zealand. Secondly, the person will be entitled to declare that they have no conviction. I think that is incredibly important. It is an absolute right, and it will be law in New Zealand when this bill passes. So, for all practical purposes, within New Zealand those convictions will be treated as if the person had never been convicted at all—the best-possible result.

The expungement scheme will apply to only specified repealed offences, and those are listed in clause 5(2). The scheme will not apply, of course, to people convicted of public order offences or those involving participants who were under the age of 16 years, and that is obviously appropriate. The Secretary for Justice will have responsibility for determining the applications for the expungement of the specified offences, and they will do that in a very simple way on the basis of papers provided, without the need for an oral hearing, except where there are exceptional circumstances, and then an oral hearing could be held. But, normally, you would not expect that an oral hearing would be necessary, and it is good to see that that can be avoided. It is also good to see that under clause 13, any person who unlawfully discloses any expunged offence commits an offence and may be liable to a fine of up to $20,000. That sort of sanction would be well-deserved if that actually happened.

So it is a very good bill, one that New Zealand First fully supports, and I want to reiterate, also, New Zealand First’s full support and appreciation for the apology made by the Minister. I do hope that with the passing of this legislation, a whole chapter—a whole sad chapter—of New Zealand’s history can finally be put behind us and that the people who are directly affected will now feel that they can get rid of that stigma and any record of the offences, which they should never have been convicted of in the first place. The passing of this bill will be a proud day for this Parliament and a proud day for New Zealand. I look forward to the final reading, when it eventually comes through. Thank you.

It has been interesting to listen to the debate as it has been going through so far this afternoon. I was thinking back to 1986, when the law passed to actually legalise homosexual behaviour. In 1986 I was a 19-year-old Massey University student who wore gumboots to lectures. I do not actually recall what my views were at the time. Seriously—I remember the issue going on, but I cannot actually recall what my personal views about it were, although New Zealand was clearly divided at the time. The fact that I cannot recall which way I thought about it obviously suggests to me that it was not important enough for me personally, at that stage, to engage with it. I was happy enough to march against the Springbok Tour—that got my blood to boil—but, sadly, this issue, I guess, did not get me out of bed to do something about it.

I say that because right now I have got a 19-year-old son who also attends Massey University. Thankfully, he is smart enough that he does not wear gumboots to lectures, and is a little more sophisticated than I ever was at that age. But it is fantastic, I think, that my son has grown up in a society in New Zealand where it is inconceivable to him that, actually, this behaviour was ever against the law, and I am grateful that as a society we have moved on to the point where we can understand that this law should never have been in place in the first place.

It was a privilege to be a part of the Justice and Electoral Committee and to hear submitters on the Wiremu Demchick petition, because we heard some stories that would make most people’s blood curdle. It was just horrible to hear of some of the things that some men were subjected to because of the laws of New Zealand. I think, as a nation, we have got to stand up now and say that was not OK. It was never OK that they should ever have been convicted in the first place, and the way they were treated afterwards definitely was not OK. There was that old L V Martin ad back in the 1980s as well, where he said: “If something’s not right, I’ll put it right because it’s the putting right that matters.”

We can never eliminate the experiences that those people had at the hands of the New Zealand law—we cannot undo it. But we can apologise, we can ensure that it never happens again, and we can ensure, by passing this legislation, that those convictions that they had no longer victimise them because they have to keep declaring it.

This is a good bill. It is an important apology. I commend it to the House and, while the chances are that I will not be here when it goes through the Justice and Electoral Committee, I have full confidence in the Parliament of New Zealand in this age and this time to do the right thing. I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. Marama Davidson—5 minutes.

It is incredibly humbling to be here, to be able to stand in support today. It is a special day. I will start by acknowledging the petition of Wiremu Demchick. The petition asks “That, in the matter of those who were convicted of consensual homosexual acts prior to the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986, the House, (a) promptly issue an official apology to those convicted, and (b) pass legislation which sets out a process for reversing the convictions of those convicted, both living and deceased, in a manner which upholds the mana and dignity of those convicted.” That is why we are here today.

I had the honour of hosting Wiremu Demchick in my office today. Even he himself admits that it was not purely him but a whole lot of people who have campaigned and have caused us to be standing here on such an important day, when we return the mana to people who are just us. They are just our family, they are just our friends, they are just our elders, and they are just part of our communities and our homes and our society.

I want to acknowledge, in particular, a young man who was murdered for being gay when I was a young girl. Homophobia has killed too many people, and even more than killing people, it has harmed people in a way that has been traumatic for generations, actually. I cannot stand today without thinking about a particular man who was killed for being gay. I think about what he lost in his life. Maybe he might have chosen to be a father with a lover or with a husband. Maybe he might have been an amazing uncle. Maybe he might have been a grandfather. Who knows, because he lost his life. I send my love to his family because the person who stole his life was my family. Homophobia has taken too many lives, and today it is an honour to put some mana back into the lives that we have taken.

I want to acknowledge the people in Te Ao Māori who have continued to fight to return to our pre-colonised notions of what sexuality, homosexuality, and whānau actually are. If we had all, as a world, held on to the more inclusive notions that define you, starting from your whakapapa, we would all be better off today. If we had all welcomed the less narrow and restricting definitions of who stands with mana, we would all be better off today—people like Dr Leonie Pīhama, Dr Mera Penehira, and Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, alongside so many others who are working so hard to restore those true meanings of whānau, of whakapapa, of sexuality, of gender, and of what the definition of “family” is.

There is a lot of healing that, hopefully, can be recognised. Today is one important—possibly small, but important—start of the work that we all have to keep doing. The lives damaged by homophobia, the lives damaged by the legalised homophobia, that the House of Representatives upheld for far too long—one second of that legislation was far too long, and we upheld it for far longer than one second.

I look forward to the changes that this action, and many other actions, makes of recognising that those people are just ours—that we belong to them and they belong to us. I look forward to the work that we will continue to do together, including expunging the criminal records of people who are just our whānau.

I want to finish up by again sending my love to the family of the young man whose life was taken by my uncle. We lost two men to homophobia. Thank you.

Ā, tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. E tika rawa ngā kōrero kua whārikihia i roto i Te Whare i tēnei rangi; te ātaahua hoki o ngā kōrero o tērā o ngā mema a Grant Robertson rāua ko Annette, me ō rāua whakaaro ki te hītori o tēnei Whare.

[And so thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. The contributions that were spread out in the House today were absolutely fitting; the contribution by that member, Grant Robertson, and by Annette, plus their thoughts about the history of this House were also beautiful.]

Today is absolutely a historic day and should be recognised. You can just tell, some days. You can just tell when you come into the House some days that it is special—that we are doing something good and right and just, and I feel like that today. However, like Annette King said, it feels a little bit ironic that while outside we were receiving a petition and letters from thousands who were sexually abused in State care and we were refusing to apologise or hold an inquiry, yet we do this today. But it is still right to do, so let us celebrate.

I want to acknowledge the collegiality of our Justice and Electoral Committee. When we received Wiremu Demchick’s petition we worked really hard. There was not one dissenting voice at any time—at any time. It was never an issue that we were going to get there; we just needed to find the way. So we took it very seriously, as we do most of the things in our committee, because they are serious issues. We heard from submitters about the abhorrent treatment—torture, isolation, beatings—that was carried out by our officials after they were arrested. The stigma and the shame then continued to hurt the lives of these men, on and on and on and on. No matter what we think—it shocked me today to find out because I did not understand that we made homophobia illegal only in the 1960s.

Earlier in the term I got to travel to Gisborne and see a group of young people who had received some suicide prevention money. They called themselves Qmunity. They are a group of mainly Māori young people who are struggling with their own sexuality and the depression that that causes, and their fight to overcome their suicidal thoughts and tendencies while they struggle to understand their sexuality and to find a place and have someone listen. They made a documentary. They made a documentary on the history of homosexual law reform in this country. They documented Fran Wilde’s fight, the protests, the arrests, and the marriage equality bill. They said “This is what this country’s overcome, and now we’re young and we want to find our place and be accepted.”, and they told their own stories. It was so healing for them to do that. I have felt like a bit of a proud mum, having fought for that putea that allowed them to do it.

No matter what your personal feelings are with this—and I understand that people might have religious ideals that differ—arresting somebody for simply loving whom they love is not right. I am so proud to be part of this Government, which has agreed to expunge these records and to apologise. When we alleviate the stigma, then we alleviate the harm and the hurt and the pain, and people can start to heal. We cannot make up for the years that have been wasted coming to this point—we cannot—but we can help to lift the burden, and we can help to send a message to our young people of today that, actually, you do not have to be ashamed. You can stand proud and you can find support. You do not have to hide and you do not have to worry about being arrested.

So the Māori Party absolutely supports this bill, and we look forward to it coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee so that we can ensure that the passage of it is well defined and the process by which these convictions can be expunged can be done as simply as possible. We understand it is going to be an effort, but we are willing to give it a go. Kia ora.

I was born in 1983, and 3 years later, Fran Wilde and her colleagues in that reforming fourth Labour Government led the charge on homosexual law reform. I have read the Hansard of that period, I have read the newspaper articles, and I have talked to people who lived through that experience. I have seen the photos of the alleged 800,000 people who signed the petition against that bill presenting it on the forecourt of Parliament. I have seen the language. It is unimaginable in 2017 to look back and think that just 30 and a bit more years ago New Zealanders could behave that way and say those things, and that the Parliament could be so divided on what is fundamentally a human rights issue. How far we have come since 1986, but also—echoing Grant Robertson’s excellent contribution in the House—how far we have still to go. Today’s motion and this bill are one step on that journey towards equality, respect, dignity, and human rights.

The machinery of this law and the proposal are a bit complex, but at their core is a very simple notion. It is the Parliament saying that these laws should never have been the law. It is the Parliament saying that those laws were wrong. It is the Parliament saying to the homosexual community that you should not bear the stigma and the shame any longer, and we are going to put right what was wrong. So at the core of this bill is a very simple notion, a correct notion, and a morally right notion, and that is why I am so proud to support it.

Allied to this bill is an apology. There was some debate about whether or not the Parliament should do this and whether or not that motion should accompany the bill. I think it was the right thing to do—I genuinely do—because what the Parliament is doing is saying sorry. To the men who were convicted of offences that criminalised love by two men, the Parliament says sorry. To the families of men who suffered trauma and despair, and some who even took their lives, the Parliament says sorry. To the LGBTIQ community generally, for the shame and the stigma, and for the persecution—State-sanctioned persecution—the Parliament says sorry.

I will freely admit to the House that initially when I was confronted with this issue, I did struggle with the notion of expungement, for a couple of reasons. One is, as members have adverted to in their speeches, the difficulty of trying to unpick and untangle offences that criminalised consenting behaviour that should never have been a crime from behaviour that should definitely be a crime—sexual abuse and violent offences. The evidence from officials was that that was tricky. So that was the first issue.

Secondly, I will freely admit that I struggled with the notion of trying to rewrite history. Whether we like it or not—and I for one, and I think the Parliament agrees that those laws should never have been in place—those laws were in place. That was the law of New Zealand up until homosexual law reform in 1987. In some ways it is a difficult thing to grasp—that history should, basically, be revised, so that we say that those laws were never actually in place when, in fact, they were. I struggled with that as a concept.

But the thing that got me was the people who turned up at our committee and gave heartbreaking evidence and testimony that just made you want to cry, about the ongoing anger and pain and shame and suffering that they and their families have endured because of these laws. I decided, essentially, that the ongoing pain and harm that has been caused by these laws means that they should go, or means that we should act as if they were never in place. We need to expunge them, and expunge those records from history.

The Parliament has done this before—that is the other thing. This is reasonably novel, but it is not completely novel. The Parliament has done this before, and we need to do it again. The Parliament has done this before in relation to a narrow, niche class of people. I forget the actual legislation, but it is from the early 2000s—to do with military offences in the early 2000s. So Parliament has done this before, and we can do it again. We can untangle the offences that genuinely should never have been crimes and those offences that still remain crimes, but we can do that at the same time as saying to the homosexual community that what was in place prior to 1987 was wrong, and it was immoral. It was inhumane, and the Parliament says sorry to you for those laws. I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure, as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, to speak on the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Bill in this, its first reading. I particularly want to start with an acknowledgment of a colleague who is no longer here, and that is Kevin Hague, who a year ago today presented the petition of Wiremu Demchick and 2,111 others that—as my colleague Marama Davidson read out earlier—asked this House to “promptly issue an official apology to those convicted”, and, secondly, to “pass legislation which sets out a process for reversing the convictions of those convicted, both living and deceased, in a manner which upholds the mana and dignity of those convicted.” Wow!

So that process started, for Wiremu and all those involved in collecting the signatures, in December 2014. I think we should put it into a global context, actually, because in 2013, Alan Turing was, by royal pardon, given a pardon for a conviction for gross indecency. That gross indecency offence was part of the legislation that we inherited in our country. It started a process in the UK that, on 31 January this year, saw more than 15,000 UK men who were convicted of gross indecency having those offences expunged. What that led to, around the world, was jurisdictions and our communities in Australia, in Canada, in Germany, and all over the world seeking the same recourse that had been given to Alan Turing. It had been given to him because of his contribution to the World War II events—because of his, I guess, service to the country, he was given a pardon.

When I look at the convictions in New Zealand—actually, under the Offences Against the Person Act of 1867, if you were convicted, you could spend your whole life in prison for committing gross indecency. That was then altered in 1893, when if you were convicted of sodomy, it was punishable by life imprisonment with hard labour, but the interesting thing is that indecency between males also provided an opportunity for them to be flogged and whipped. I say that because in Aceh this year we have had men who were flogged and whipped because they were caught having sex. So we have moved a long way to where we are today. In 1986, under the Homosexual Law Reform Act, we decriminalised male same-sex consensual intercourse, but what we also did was equalise the age—we made us equal to other New Zealanders.

In highlighting Kevin’s involvement with the petition from Wiremu, I also want to talk about some of the things that he talked about at the time. He was the only MP who was in the House who could have been convicted—and I acknowledge my colleague Grant Robertson, who is too young, but he is sitting beside me now—and he said that the impact on those who were caught was massive. They lost their jobs, they lost their houses, and they lost their families. A lot of them were isolated. You can imagine how that dispossession then contributed to how most of them lived the rest of their lives—in poverty, as people addicted to drugs and alcohol, as depressed people. Some of them did commit suicide.

But the one thing that struck me with what Kevin shared was that when they were convicted, their private lives were read out in a summary of facts in court and, on sentencing, their names were published in the local newspaper for all to see. So they were outed. It was not a private thing that happened; it was actually an incredibly public thing to happen. For a lot of them, they lost their entire family and community network, which is why a lot of our whānau fled to Australia to start a new life.

I also want to highlight where I think this bill emanated from, because Minister Adams, when the petition was initially presented to the House, stated that it could require a case by case investigation and that it could be too difficult. But what she also said was that she would wait for our Justice and Electoral Committee to consider the petition before she made any decision. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues on the Justice and Electoral Committee who are members of the Government—so I want to acknowledge Sarah Dowie, our chair; I want to acknowledge Chris Bishop; I want to acknowledge Paul Foster-Bell; I want to acknowledge Jono Naylor; and I want to acknowledge Maureen Pugh, and also Marama Fox, because you obviously kept the Minister abreast with what was happening before the select committee in terms of the petition, and I actually think that is what drove her and the Government to bring this piece of legislation to the House.

It also says something to me about the process of this House and the value of petitions and the process that happens in select committees to lead to an output such as a piece of legislation that is, in effect, going to implement everything that the petition asked for. That is an incredibly valuable thing, and I think we should all cherish the moment because it says our democracy works.

You know, we have all contributed to this bill being here today, on the backs of our ancestors—all those who have come before us. So I am going to take an opportunity, because we are going to also, very soon, be talking about another very important piece of legislation. What I want to highlight in the Oranga Tamariki legislation that we are about to debate—and it is wonderful that the Minister is in the House at the moment—is that under the Oranga Tamariki legislation we have recognised the child and young person’s right to their sexual orientation and gender identity. I think that is an incredibly profound thing.

I just want to read a quote from Lord McNally, talking about Alan Turing’s royal pardon: “the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.” The reason I highlight that is that children in care now have the right to their sexual orientation and gender identity. What that then means for us and for the Public Service and the public sector is that those children, who may be intersex and may be trans, deserve access to health services that are going to ensure that their identity is supported. They should not have to face and return to times where they are discriminated against, where they are persecuted, and where, actually, they are invisible.

That is why, as a member of our cross-party rainbow group, we have been fighting for visibility in the education sector, which is why we have said to the Education Review Office: “Why aren’t you specifically looking at the well-being of our LGBTIQ when you go to our high schools?”. That is why we have highlighted in the health sector—and I have got a meeting with Minister Coleman coming up—that our intersex children’s health needs are not being met and that our trans children’s health needs are not being met. So, for me, that is what this provides. It provides, now, another platform where we continue to springboard forward. So this is never the end. I mean, for me it is always like ka whawhai tonu mātou—you know, struggle without end—because there are always discriminations in our law and in our system that need to addressed and rectified.

Today is an incredibly special day. I also want to commend the Government for the apology. Annette King highlighted that we have done this previously with the Chinese community and with the Samoan community, and so it is appropriate today that we also acknowledge that our LGBTIQ, our homosexual community in Aotearoa New Zealand, deserve an apology from the State because we are not criminals, we never were, and we never should have been. Kia ora.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee.

The question is that this House apologise to those homosexual New Zealanders who were convicted for consensual adult activity, and recognise the tremendous hurt and suffering those men and their families have gone through, and the continued effects the convictions have had on them.

Motion agreed to.