Should candidates have to disclose criminal convictions?

John MacDonald writes:

When our kids were younger, I served a couple of terms on the board at our local primary school and never, during that six years, did it enter my mind that some of my fellow board members might be ex-prisoners.

I’m pretty sure none of them were but there could’ve been because we’re finding out today that if someone has served a prison sentence of less than two years they can put themselves up for election to a school board of trustees.

We’re finding out about it because it’s election time for school boards around the country and someone by the name of Philip Arps has put his hat in the ring to be a board member at Te Aratai College in Christchurch, which is being described today as one of Christchurch’s most multi-cultural schools.

If his name rings a bell, that’s because he’s the white supremacist who used to run the insulation company which charged a certain amount per metre for insulation, which was a hate symbol popular with white supremacists.

Back in 2016, he delivered a pig’s head to the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch and, more recently, he’s had connections with the anti-vaccine mandate movement.

But he’s probably best known for sending the video of the March 15 Christchurch mosque shooting to 30 people, and asking a friend to modify it by adding cross-hairs and a “kill count”.

Arps is a repugnant neo-nazi and human being.

That appalling, sickening behaviour earned him six months in prison.

But because he was sentenced to less than two years he is fully entitled to run in school board elections. Which is what he’s currently doing. In fact, anyone who has served a prison sentence of less than two years can.

So, in light of Arps trying to get elected to the Te Aratai College board, there are calls today for the rules to be changed because they provide no safeguard at all against parents with extremist views ending up on school boards.

I’m against there being some sort of body that vets candidates for school boards and decides they are suitable. I trust parents to make the right decision.

So I think letting someone stand for school board elections if they’ve served a prison sentence of fewer than two years is going to be fine in most cases – but much more transparency is needed.

That’s why I think that if there’s going to be any change to the rules, it shouldn’t be along the lines of banning ex-prisoners from school boards – but we should be requiring these people to be completely open and transparent from the outset about their past.

And I think the best way of doing that would be to require candidates to include their convictions in the blurb they write that goes out to the parents when it’s time to do the voting.

This seems a worthwhile idea – transparency is a good thing.

But why stop at school boards? Why not require disclosure of criminal convictions for local and central government candidates also?