The Cousins suspension - an exercise in misguided moralising

Presently there are no effective laws protecting people who have transgressed the law from work deprivations in the form of being sacked from a job or being overlooked for a prospective job. Australians are often denied jobs or lose existing jobs as a result of minor transgressions which have no connection with the job in question. A 10-year-old shop-stealing offence can lead to a person being precluded from getting the most dreary of jobs.

Such discrimination is rife. Hundreds of thousands of police checks by employers are conducted each year in Australia. Workplace discrimination against people who have been convicted of criminal offences or who are suspected of engaging in such conduct is in most cases unfair.

As noted by Prime Minister John Howard following Pauline Hanson's (wrongful) conviction for electoral fraud: “As a matter of principle my view is that once a person has paid their debt to society, as the old expression goes, and done their time, then they should be able to live a normal life”.

Living a normal live includes being eligible to secure employment opportunities that are commensurate with one's skill and knowledge. There are several reasons why people who have “served their time” should not be subjected to incidental punishment in the form of employment deprivations.

First, people should not be punished twice for the one act. There is little doubt that being deprived of a job or having one’s employment opportunities reduced sets back one’s interests.

Second, the compound punishment of court sanctions and employment deprivations often violates the proportionality thesis, which prescribes that the harshness of the sanction should match the seriousness of the offence.

Thus, if rumours that Cousins is addicted to (non-performance enhancing) illegal drugs are true and this becomes a police matter, his punishment for this should start and end with the court imposed sanction. In the meantime, he needs support to assist him with whatever issues he is dealing with, rather than been publicly embarrased and shamed by being “outed” by his club.

Third, inflicting work deprivations for previous transgression is tantamount to punishing people for their character. This is a “no go” area. Character is a complex trait. It requires a wide-ranging balancing exercise to be undertaken.

One or two (even) criminal misdeeds do not wipe away all the good that a person may have achieved during their lives. Commendable acts such as donating to charity, saving stray animals, treating others with concern and respect, taking short showers, paying bills on time and allowing enough road space to enable drivers to merge are not reduced to zero by the occasional transgression. All of these considerations must be weighed into the mix when deciding whether a person has a character deficit or credit.

So how do we remedy the situation?

The basic principle that should be adopted is that once people have completed their sanction they should be eligible for all forms of employment, except if there is a direct demonstrable link between the offence and the proposed job or the employment setting that would provide the wrongdoer with an enhanced opportunity to re-offend.

Thus, recidivist thieves should be excluded from working in areas where they would deal with money and violent offenders should be precluded from working in pubs but there is no basis for disqualifying people with such prior convictions from working as nurses, journalists or in garden variety public service positions.

And as for footballers, they should be allowed to ply their skills so long as they are capable of being in the best 20 players on the park. The rest of us need to confine our worship of them to their exploits on the park.