Anti-discrimination laws have been changed to allow employers to reject job applications from people with criminal records in certain circumstances.
Announced by Attorney-General, Christian Porter, the changes have been designed to give employers greater certainty about when they can and cannot reject someone.
Mr Porter said the changes came in amendments to the Australian Human Rights Commission Regulations 1989 and allow employers to exercise reasonable discretion against prospective employees if their criminal record is relevant to the position being applied for.
He said however that it remained unlawful for employers to discriminate if the conviction is irrelevant to the role.
Mr Porter said that previously, employers had to clear a much higher bar that required them to show that a criminal record was directly relevant to the “inherent requirements” of a position.
“Most Australians would agree that people with criminal records should have a chance to turn their lives around and not be permanently excluded from employment,” Mr Porter said.
“At the same time, we need to strike a sensible balance that ensures employers can reject an applicant if they reasonably believe they are unsuitable for a position due to the particular nature of their conviction.”
He said the need for change was demonstrated by a 2018 case involving a major insurance company which was found to have unlawfully discriminated when it withdrew an offer of employment it had made to a man who had failed to disclose convictions for child pornography offences.
The company had argued that the man’s record demonstrated he was not someone of sufficient character and integrity to be trusted to hold the position, which required him to work unsupervised from his home address and to deal with sensitive customer data.
The man’s offending had also primarily involved the use of computers and most of his work would be computer-based.
Mr Porter said that under the previous rules, the Australian Human Rights Commission rejected the company’s claims and found the man had been discriminated against because his record was not directly relevant to the inherent requirements of the position.
“This case demonstrated that our laws in this area were not working … which is why this change has been made,” Mr Porter said.
“The amendment will provide the certainty and clarity that employers need, while also ensuring that applicants remain protected when their conviction clearly has no relevance to the job they are applying for,” the Attorney-General said.