The following information is based on information provided by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

In some cases, legislation or licensing rules require disclosure.
In other cases, the specific circumstances of the position may require disclosure.

An employer can generally ask a person if she or he has a criminal record and may be entitled to refuse to hire a person because he or she failed to answer a reasonable question, or gave a dishonest answer. When an employee does answer a question about criminal record, the response should be honest and fully candid.

An employee or applicant may not have to disclose their complete criminal record. Where there has been a finding of guilt but no conviction is recorded, there may be no requirement to disclose the guilty finding. This situation might change if an employer specifically asks about ‘findings of guilt, with or without conviction’.

There is also generally no requirement to disclose a spent conviction. Spent conviction schemes allow criminal record checks to be amended to remove references to some offences after a period of non-offending. However, there are some offences that never become spent, for example sex offences in some jurisdictions. Further, some kinds of employment, for example employment where people will be working with children, are exempt from spent conviction legislation. This means that employers are able to receive an employee’s complete criminal record.