Commonwealth Numbered Regulations - Explanatory Statements

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CRIMES REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT) 1991 NO. 258

STATUTORY RULES 1991 No. 258

Issued by the Authority of the Attorney-General

Crimes Act 1914

Crimes Regulations (Amendment)

Section 91 of the Crimes Act 1914 (the Crimes Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations for the purposes of the Act.

The Regulations (Amendment):

•       make amendments to an exclusion from the operation of the Commonwealth spent conviction scheme granted by existing regulations under paragraph 85ZZH(k) of the Crimes Act.

Part VIIC of the Crimes Act provides a scheme by which, after a period of ten years for an adult or five years for a minor, convictions for Commonwealth offences are to be treated as spent in that the convicted person need not disclose, nor may any other person or organisation disclose or take account of, such conviction.

Section 85ZZH in Part VIIC provides exclusions from the operation of the scheme for a number of specified purposes. Paragraph 85ZZH(k) provides that further exclusions may be prescribed.

A number of exclusions have already been prescribed in Schedule 4 to the Crimes Regulations; the proposed Regulations makes amendments to one of these.

Details of the Regulations are as follows:

Regulation 1.1: This regulation is a formal provision providing that the Crimes Regulations are amended as set out in the proposed regulations.

Regulation 2: This regulation amends Schedule 4 to the Crimes Regulations as follows:

Subregulation 2.1 amends Item 1 (column 3) by omitting paragraph (2) and substituting a paragraph to exclude Commonwealth Authorities from the operation of the spent conviction scheme, in relation to offences prescribed in column 4, for the purpose of assessing the suitability of a person to have right of access to a part of an aerodrome to which access is restricted for the purposes of an airport security program within the meaning of the Air Navigation Regulations. This amendment replaces an exclusion which incorrectly referred to regulations made under the Civil Aviation Act 1988.

Subregulation 2.2 amends Item 1(column 4) to express more clearly the intention of the legislation, namely, that the exclusion from the operation of the spent conviction scheme for the purposes set out in paragraph (2) of column 3 applies to offences of violence and to offences of threatened or actual damage to property and not only to an offence containing elements of both violence and damage to property.