Mr. Christopher Bowes:

On the second question, I think it may have been Michael Farrell but it might have been before his FLAC days. On the issue of criminal conviction, when the review was happening, there was a proposal to create a criminal conviction ground and a Private Members' Bill was proposed, I think by Senator Ruane, in relation to it. My recollection is that it linked the definition of a criminal conviction ground with the existing spent conviction legislation that is in place, which is a sensible approach to take to that ground. If someone has a conviction that is considered to be a spent conviction under existing legislation, they can seek individual redress where someone discriminates against them on the basis of that conviction. That might be worth examining. We looked at a number of grounds in our submission. That one is in our original submission to the review. We looked at the criminal conviction ground and it is certainly something that could be looked at by the committee under the whole area of grounds of discrimination, apart from the intersectionality provision in the general scheme, which needs to be expanded somewhat. The issue of the grounds in the legislation is not looked at in the general scheme at all. We looked at such things as gender identity and the socioeconomic ground. Last week, we heard about the family carers ground and that is in our submission as well, but certainly the criminal conviction ground could be looked at to advance the legislation. It has already been considered to such a degree that there is a draft ground in that Private Members' Bill, which could be examined again.