Comment by skissane

> 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.)