A mate who runs a small install crew asked me this one over a coffee last year. He had a good applicant, decent references, could clearly do the work, and then a police check came back with something on it from years ago. His question was simple: “Am I even allowed to knock him back for that? And if I do, am I going to get done for discrimination?”
It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that most of what you will find online does not actually answer it. Search “can I refuse to hire someone with a criminal record in Australia” and you get generic HR content written for employers in the abstract. None of it talks about electrical licensing, in-home customer contact, or the accreditation obligations that sit over a solar business specifically. So let me give you the direct answer first, then the framework you can actually use.
The short answer: generally, yes
There is no blanket federal anti-discrimination law in Australia that protects people with a criminal record the way race, sex, age or disability are protected. Criminal record is not a protected attribute under the main Commonwealth discrimination Acts, which means a business generally can decline to hire someone on the basis of their record, provided it does so lawfully (Employment Innovations, n.d.).
That “provided it does so lawfully” is doing a lot of work, and it is where most owners get tripped up. So do not read the short answer as “do whatever you like.” Read it as “you have real latitude here, but there are rails, and the rails are not where you think they are.”
Where the protections actually come from
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) can receive and investigate complaints about discrimination on the basis of a criminal record. The catch is that this power is conciliation-only. The AHRC has no ability to make a binding order or award compensation for criminal record discrimination; the most it can do is try to conciliate the complaint between the parties and, if that fails, publish a report (Employment Innovations, n.d.). That is a very different kind of exposure to a Fair Work adverse action claim or a protected-attribute discrimination case, which can carry real penalties.
The stronger protections sit in a patchwork of state and territory law. Some jurisdictions treat “irrelevant criminal record” as something an employer cannot discriminate on. The rules genuinely differ across the country, so what is clearly lawful in one state may not be in another (HR Connect, n.d.). If you run crews across borders, say a Queensland base with jobs into northern New South Wales, this matters. You cannot assume one hiring policy travels cleanly across every state you operate in (Recording Law, n.d.).
The thread running through all of it is one word: relevance. The law does not generally protect a “clean record” as a right. What it leans on is whether the record is actually relevant to the job. And relevance is exactly the thing a solar business is well placed to assess, because our roles come with concrete, defensible requirements.
What makes a record “relevant” in a solar business
This is the part nobody writes for us, so let me spell it out from the operator’s side of the desk.
Electrical licensing conditions. Your installers and any licensed electrical worker on the crew hold licences issued and policed by state regulators. Those licensing regimes have their own fit-and-proper and disclosure requirements, and certain offences can genuinely bear on whether someone can hold or keep a licence. If an offence connects to the licence the role depends on, that is a legitimate, role-based reason to weigh it. You are not making a moral judgment; you are assessing whether the person can lawfully do the job you are hiring for.
In-home and vulnerable-customer contact. A residential solar job puts your people inside someone’s home, often with elderly homeowners, sometimes with a parent and young kids in the next room. A sales rep at the kitchen table and an installer running cable through the roof space are both in a position of trust and access. Offences involving violence, dishonesty against a householder, or anything touching vulnerable people have a genuine and current connection to that kind of role. This is the clearest relevance case in our industry, and it is the one I would document most carefully.
Vehicle and driving offences for site access. Half the job is getting to the job. If the role requires driving a company ute, towing a trailer of panels, or holding a clean enough licence to be insured, then serious or recent driving offences are relevant on their face. A disqualified driver cannot get your gear to site.
Conduct obligations around reps. Solar sits under Clean Energy Council accreditation expectations and state consumer and fair trading law that govern how systems are sold, especially through direct and door-to-door channels. Those obligations give you an added, legitimate reason to screen for relevance in customer-facing roles. When the regulator’s concern is rep conduct at the door, an applicant’s history of dishonesty or harassment is not an idle curiosity; it is squarely on point. I have written more about the standards direct sales has to meet in my piece on door-to-door solar sales compliance, and the same conduct lens applies at the hiring gate.
The framework I use
Here is the practical sequence. It is not legal advice, and for a hard case you should get proper advice for your state, but it is the disciplined process that keeps you on the right side of the relevance test.
1. Define the inherent requirements of the specific role first. Before you ever look at a record, write down what the job actually demands. A licensed installer, a customer-facing sales rep, a warehouse hand and a scheduler have very different requirements. In-home access, driving, licensing and handling customer money are the ones that tend to make records relevant. Do this before the check, not after, so you are assessing against a standard you set honestly rather than reverse-engineering a reason to say no.
2. Assess genuine and current connection. Ask whether the record actually connects to those requirements. A twenty-year-old minor offence with no bearing on installing solar or entering homes is a very different thing to a recent offence that goes to honesty or safety in exactly the setting you are hiring for. “Current” matters. So does the nature of the offence versus the nature of the role.
3. Document the reasoning. Write down why the record was or was not relevant to the inherent requirements. If a decision is ever questioned, a short, dated note explaining the role-based reasoning is worth more than any verbal assurance. This is the same audit-trail discipline that protects you everywhere else in this business.
4. Do not ask for records that have no bearing on the job. Requesting a full national police check for a role that plainly does not need one, then declining on the basis of something irrelevant, is how you walk into the “irrelevant criminal record” trap in the states that recognise it. Ask for what the role justifies.
A National Police Certificate itself is straightforward to obtain through the Australian Federal Police or your state police service (Australian Federal Police, n.d.; Queensland Police Service, n.d.). The certificate is the easy part. The judgment about what to do with it is where the discipline lives.
Why blanket “no record, full stop” policies are the real risk
The instinct, especially when you are busy and hiring fast in peak season, is to just write “no criminal record” into the ad and be done with it. I understand the appeal. It is also the approach most likely to bite you.
A blanket exclusion skips the relevance test entirely, which is precisely the step state and territory law expects an employer to apply. It sweeps up applicants whose records have nothing to do with the role, and in the jurisdictions that protect against irrelevant-record discrimination, that is where complaints come from. It is also a reputational risk in a small industry where word travels. A policy that says “we assess relevance to the role” is both more defensible and, frankly, gets you better hires than a policy that throws away good people over something that never mattered.
Getting it right consistently, not just once
Making the right call on one applicant is one thing. Proving you applied the same standard to every installer and rep you have ever onboarded is another, and that is where a lot of otherwise well-run businesses fall down. When the records live in one person’s inbox and a couple of paper folders, you cannot easily show a clean, consistent trail if a decision is ever challenged.
This is one of the reasons I am building CurrentFlow. The idea is that onboarding compliance records, police checks, licence conditions, and the notes behind a hiring decision will sit in one place against each person, so there is a clear audit trail rather than a scramble through old emails. It is designed to make the consistency provable, not just claimed. That is the whole point of doing the process properly in the first place.
The bottom line for a solar business owner is this. You generally can refuse to hire someone with a criminal record, but the smart way to exercise that right is not a blanket ban. It is a role-first, relevance-based, documented decision. Get that habit right and you protect the business, treat applicants fairly, and never have to guess whether you were allowed to make the call you made.
References
Australian Federal Police. (n.d.). National police checks. Retrieved from https://www.afp.gov.au/our-services/national-police-checks
Employment Innovations. (n.d.). Workplace discrimination (criminal record). Retrieved from https://www.employmentinnovations.com/knowledge-base/fair-work-act/workplace-discrimination-criminal-record/
HR Connect. (n.d.). Understanding discrimination in the workplace and criminal records. Retrieved from https://hrconnect.com.au/knowledge-base/fair-work-act/discrimination-in-the-workplace/
Queensland Police Service. (n.d.). National police certificates. Retrieved from https://www.police.qld.gov.au/documents-for-purchase/national-police-certificates
Recording Law. (n.d.). Criminal record and employment rights in Australia: What protection applies. Retrieved from https://www.recordinglaw.com/australia/background-checks/criminal-record-employment-rights-australia/
FAQ
Is it illegal to refuse someone a job because of their criminal record in Australia?
Generally, no. Criminal record is not a protected attribute under the main Commonwealth anti-discrimination Acts the way race or sex are, so there is no blanket ban on declining to hire on that basis (Employment Innovations, n.d.). The protections that do exist come mostly from state and territory law and tend to hinge on whether the record is relevant to the actual role, so a role-first, documented decision is the safe approach.
Can the Australian Human Rights Commission force me to hire someone or pay compensation?
No. The AHRC can investigate a criminal record discrimination complaint, but its process is conciliation-only. It cannot make a binding order or award compensation for criminal record discrimination; at most it attempts to conciliate and can report on the matter (Employment Innovations, n.d.). That is a lower level of exposure than a protected-attribute discrimination claim, but it is not a reason to be careless.
When is a criminal record actually “relevant” to a solar role?
When it connects to the genuine, current requirements of the specific job. In solar that usually means electrical licensing conditions for installers, in-home or vulnerable-customer contact for sales reps and installers, and vehicle or driving offences for anyone who needs to drive to site. Define the role’s requirements first, then assess whether the record has a real bearing on them.
Do I have to run a police check on every solar hire?
There is generally no law forcing a police check for every solar role, but many reputable installers and retailers require one for customer-facing and in-home positions as a trust and compliance measure. Only request the level of check the role justifies, because asking for records that have no bearing on the job is what creates “irrelevant record” risk in the states that protect against it. Checks are available through the Australian Federal Police and state police services (Australian Federal Police, n.d.).
Are blanket “no criminal record” hiring policies a problem?
They carry the most risk, not the least. A blanket exclusion skips the relevance test that state and territory law expects employers to apply, sweeps up applicants whose records are irrelevant to the role, and creates both legal and reputational exposure. A policy that assesses relevance to the specific role is more defensible and tends to produce better hires.