Police Check FAQs

Employers have a duty of care in the recruitment process to ensure safe conduct of business. You need to protect your organisation’s assets and keep your employees and anyone who comes into contact with your business safe. Police checks help mitigate risk by giving you information on criminal convictions that may prevent an applicant from being able to perform the inherent requirements of the job.

A National Police Check contains a summary of a person’s police history information in Australia. This includes all findings of guilt unless spent. Whether a finding is spent will depend on state and federal legislation, but generally a spent finding is a criminal offence older than 5 years if convicted as a child, or an offence older than 10 years in any other case.

This Certificate is current as of the date of issue. As it is a point in time check, there is no associated validity period. It is at the employer’s discretion to regulate what period of time a Police Check is valid.

In 70% of cases, you will receive your certificate within 60 minutes. In rare cases, the check may take up to 10 days to be returned. We can only process your application once we have received all valid documents.

No, the Working with Children (WWC) Check and a Police Check are different certificates. InfoTrack only provides a National Police Check.

You must be over 16 years of age to order a Police Check, anyone under the age of 18 years must have the consent of a parent, guardian or legal representative.

Other than checks for police investigation/prosecution purposes no-one is permitted to check another person’s police record without their consent. For other purposes such as employment, can only be done with the signed consent of the individual.

• Signed Informed Consent
• Four identity documents

ACIC provide three categories of identity documents and a list of the documents acceptable under each category. We are required to sight at least:

• one commencement of identity document
• one primary use in the community document
• two secondary use in the community documents.

The Agreement advises, at Clause 11.5 (b), that we can sight identity documents:

• locally, by sighting an original presented by the applicant in-person
• remotely, by sighting a copy of each document submitted by the applicant through the post or by email.

Local sighting is face-to-face with an original document and the corresponding applicant. Remote sighting is digital/electronic and may include:

• email
• webcam
• skype(facetime)
• video conference
• uploaded documents on online forms

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No one is permitted to check another person’s police record without that person’s consent. Individuals have the right to privacy and freedom from discrimination. The relevant legislation is Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities 2006, Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014: Organisations, Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (Cth) and the Australian Human Rights Commission Regulations 1989 (Cth).

You should give the applicant an opportunity to address their criminal record and explain the circumstances surrounding any convictions. Each case should be decided in its individual context in relation to the position, your organisation’s policies and any applicable anti-discrimination guidelines. Factors that you might consider include:

• the age of the applicant at the time of the offence
• how recently the offence occurred
• whether there is a pattern of reoffending
• the seriousness of the offence and its relationship to the specific job
• the sentence imposed by the courts
• evidence of rehabilitation including subsequent work experience and characte r references

For more information, you can refer to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Guidelines for the Prevention of Discrimination in employment on the Basis of Criminal Record.

If you believe the results on your police check to be incorrect, and you would like to raise a dispute claim, you can complete an online dispute form to start the dispute process.  It is important to note that disputes can only be raised for one of the following reasons:

• The police information released does not belong to you;
• Part of the police information does not belong to you;
• The police information belongs to the you, but the details are inaccurate;
• The police information belongs to you, but should not have been released.

There is no set turn around time for disputes to be resolved, however we will confirm receipt of the dispute within 72 business hours of your request and provide updates as they become available.