Comment by ulf-77723

3 days ago

Most interesting for Australia and generally society is the fact that a judge has to associate the behavior of collecting different materials from the periodic table with mental health issues in order to not ridicule the current laws.

15 comments

ulf-77723

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mianos  2 days ago

They have the wrong person with mental health issues. Everyone involved in this whole story, aside from some guy with a hobby collecting elements, are absolutely insane. (I live nearby so I have been following the story closely).

that_lurker  3 days ago

And because of that he most likely will have really hard time getting a job after this

  • _fat_santa  2 days ago

    Would he though?

    This kid (assuming they go to college, etc) could quite possibly get a job in a lab or some other scientific establishment. At a place like that everyone would know about his case AND know how insane it was.

  • Cordiali  2 days ago

    I get the impression that background checks are basically standard practice in America. That's not generally true in Australia, only in certain industries and roles.

    • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2  2 days ago

      It seems it kinda depends since there are background checks and background checks. In private sector, it ranges all the way from credit check to actual invasive paid background check conducted by a third party, whose accuracy may very wildly ( I don't want to go into too much detail, but buddy had some troubled history in one state, but the background check conducted in another state did not raise those issues at all despite the fact that those same issues would have been treated differently, where he is now ). And then ( mostly ) public sector, where the range goes a little further to include checks for IC, which, apparently ( I am not aware of anyone who had one ), include actual interviews with people in your life.

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    • skissane  2 days ago

      > That's not generally true in Australia, only in certain industries and roles.

      In software and IT, it is standard practice (in my personal experience) for private sector employers in Australia to ask for a national police check (criminal record).

      Financial firms (such as banks) demand it, because they don't want to hire people with a criminal record for fraud or theft, they worry they'll use their insider access to commit fraud or theft again. And they often put standard terms in their vendor contracts to demand any vendor employees working on the contract also have a pre-hire criminal record check. Which means if you have finance industry customers (or hope to get them in the future), the simplest approach is just to do it for all your employees. If you are some small business doing tech support for other small businesses, you might not bother.

      But, since this is not fraud or theft, they officially speaking don't care – whether they would in practice, likely depends on the individual company (hiring manager and HR). Plus someone else mentioned there was no conviction recorded, which means he won't get a criminal record for this – well, it will probably remain in the database forever, but it will be flagged as hidden, so an ordinary police check won't include it. (I thought maybe that he might temporarily have a record until his bond expires, but reading more about it, sounds like that isn't actually true.)

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