No Conviction Recorded vs a Recorded Conviction in Queensland

Being found guilty and having a conviction recorded are two different things. A Queensland court can do the first without doing the second, and it is that second decision that follows you around afterwards.

If no conviction is recorded, the law treats it as though the conviction never happened, and it will not normally turn up on a police check. If a conviction is recorded, it stays on your criminal history until enough time passes for it to become “spent”.

Two separate Acts answer those two questions, which is where most of the confusion comes from. Whether a conviction gets recorded is s 12 of the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld). When a recorded conviction stops having to be disclosed is the Criminal Law (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Act 1986 (Qld).

Will the court record my conviction?

It is up to the magistrate or judge, and they have to look at your whole situation, not just what you did. Section 12(2) tells them what to weigh up:

• how serious the offence was
• your age and your character
• what recording a conviction would do to your chances of getting work
• what it would do to you financially and socially

None of those automatically beats the others. It is a judgement call on your particular facts, which is why it pays to put real material in front of the court rather than simply asking: references, something concrete showing what a conviction would cost you at work, evidence of how you have lived until now.

What “no conviction recorded” actually means

You were found guilty. You were sentenced. But s 12(3) then says it is not to be treated as a conviction for any purpose. It cannot go into any record apart from the court’s own file and the criminal history police keep.

In everyday terms, it will not normally show up on a standard national police check, and you can usually say honestly that you have no conviction for it.

It is not invisible, though. If you are back in court later for something else, the judge sentencing you can still see it. And a small group of jobs and licences require full disclosure whatever the court did, including police officers, teachers and some legal roles.

The one big exception: domestic violence

If the offence was a domestic violence one, it goes onto your criminal history as a “relevant domestic violence offence” even when the court records no conviction (s 12A), unless the court is not satisfied that it qualifies as one.

That is deliberate. A court dealing with you for a later domestic violence matter is meant to see the whole pattern. So “no conviction recorded” does not clear a domestic violence finding the way it clears most other things.

If a conviction is recorded, when does it go away?

It never gets deleted. What happens is that it becomes “spent”, which means you stop having to disclose it and other people stop being allowed to.

In Queensland the wait is:

• 10 years if you were dealt with on indictment, meaning in the District or Supreme Court, as an adult
• 5 years for everything else, including anything you were dealt with for as a child

Two things get in the way.

The first is the sentence. The scheme only covers you if you were not sentenced to more than 30 months of imprisonment, and a suspended sentence still counts. Above that line, a Queensland conviction never becomes spent at all.

The second is picking up another conviction. That restarts the clock, and it can even revive one that had already gone spent (s 11). There is a sensible limit on it: if the new offence is a minor one that could be dealt with summarily, the clock only restarts if the court specifically orders it in the public interest.

Once the period is up, you can lawfully say you were never convicted, including on oath, and nobody can lead evidence to prove you wrong (s 8). The exceptions are set out further down.

Does any of this count outside Queensland?

This is the question we get asked most once a sentence is behind someone. They are taking a job in Sydney, applying for a licence in Perth, or booking a trip.

Both of the Acts above are Queensland Acts. They tell Queensland courts, and people in Queensland, what to do. They do not bind an employer in Melbourne, a licensing body in Perth, or a foreign embassy. Whether you are protected in those places depends on the rules there, and the rules are different almost everywhere.

Does “no conviction recorded” travel interstate?

Usually yes, but not for the reason you would expect. Once you cross the border it is not s 12(3) doing the work.

Under Queensland’s rehabilitation Act, a finding of guilt with no conviction recorded counts as a “charge” rather than a conviction (s 3). A charge is not part of your criminal history at all, and nobody can require you to disclose it (s 5).

Most other places land in the same spot by their own route. In New South Wales (s 8(2)) and the Northern Territory (s 7(2)), a finding of guilt without a conviction is cleared straight away. In Victoria, a conviction the court does not record is spent the day it is imposed (s 7(1)(a)). In the ACT it is spent when the charge is dismissed (s 12(3)). If your penalty came with conditions attached, several of those schemes wait until you have finished them.

Two exceptions are worth knowing. Tasmania’s Act only deals with convictions actually “recorded against a person” (s 3), so a finding without a recorded conviction sits outside its scheme rather than being cleared by it. And under the Commonwealth scheme, being found guilty and discharged without conviction still counts as a conviction (s 85ZM(1)(b) of Part VIIC of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth)), so at that level it is not wiped on the day. It has to wait out the full period like anything else.

The same conviction can be spent here and still live in another state

Every state and territory runs its own scheme, with its own waiting period and its own cut-off for how heavy a sentence can be before a conviction sticks to you permanently.

The cut-offs are where people come unstuck. Queensland, Victoria and the Commonwealth draw the line at 30 months of prison. New South Wales, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Tasmania draw it at six months, and above that line nothing is ever cleared.

So if you were sentenced to 12 months, that conviction becomes spent here after 10 years, and can never become spent under New South Wales law. Same conviction, different answer, depending on who is asking.

Checked against the current version of each Act as at July 2026. These schemes get amended regularly, and the Western Australian list in particular is set by schedule and regulation, so it is worth confirming the position at the time it actually matters to you.

Can you deny it interstate?

In Queensland, once the waiting period is up and the conviction has not been revived, you can lawfully say you were never convicted, on oath or otherwise (s 8). That is a Queensland protection, though.

Everywhere else it splits two ways.

Some places simply accept our answer. Victoria treats a conviction spent under the law of the state that imposed it as spent for its purposes too (s 3), which gives you Victoria’s full right not to disclose (s 20). Western Australia goes further and names Queensland outright: its Schedule 2 recognises a Queensland conviction once our waiting period has run and the conviction has not been revived. South Australia recognises other schemes that have been formally declared to correspond with its own.

Others ignore our answer and run their own test. New South Wales (s 7(2)), Tasmania (s 4), the ACT (s 9) and the Northern Territory (s 4(2)) all reach convictions from outside their borders, but they measure them against their own cut-offs rather than ours. That is why those six month lines in the table matter so much.

There is a Commonwealth layer on top, and it is narrower than people assume. Its test is 10 years, or 5 if you were dealt with as a minor, with nothing over 30 months. Clear that, and you do not have to disclose the conviction to any Commonwealth authority anywhere in the country (s 85ZV(2)). You can lawfully deny it on oath as well (s 85ZW). What it does not do is give you a right against a private employer in another state. For a state conviction, that wider protection only runs in the Commonwealth’s own territories.

Every one of these schemes also has its own list of exceptions, and they overlap heavily: courts, police, and vetting for work like policing, corrective services, child-related roles and some public appointments. Queensland’s list is s 9A, and it requires you to disclose both spent convictions and convictions that were never recorded.

How police checks actually work

A national police check is not one national list of convictions. It is run by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, which matches your details against police records around the country and sends any match back to the police force that holds it. That force then decides what it is allowed to release, going by the purpose of the check and its own state’s spent conviction rules.

Two practical consequences. A Queensland conviction is assessed by Queensland Police under Queensland law even when the check was ordered by an employer in Sydney. And the same conviction can be released for one purpose and held back for another.

Travel, visas and citizenship

Spent conviction laws are domestic. They control what you have to disclose under Australian law. They do not bind another country, and they do not stop anyone asking you their own questions.

Two things are worth being blunt about.

Australian visas and citizenship are carved out of the protections entirely. Section 85ZZH(d) of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) puts decisions under the Migration Act 1958 and the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 outside the scheme, so the decision maker can ask about a spent conviction and take it into account.

Other countries do not recognise our schemes at all. The United States is the clearest example. Its visa forms ask about arrests and convictions even where a pardon or something similar has followed. US State Department guidance on the United Kingdom’s equivalent scheme puts it flatly: “even if your arrest or conviction is considered spent, you are still require[d] to declare it”. Ticking “no” because it is spent here can be treated as lying on the form, and that is a much bigger problem than the conviction was.

None of this is set off by moving or travelling on its own. It only comes up when something asks you: a job, a licence, a screening check, a visa, or a court.

What about diversion?

Diversion programs (see our explainer on Court Diversion and DAAR) are usually aimed at exactly this outcome: a good behaviour bond under s 19 of the Penalties and Sentences Act with no conviction recorded at all. If you are pleading guilty to a minor drug matter, our guide to Queensland’s drug possession laws covers how that charge is usually dealt with.

Is it different for serious charges?

Section 12 applies to every offence. But courts weigh it up differently as the charges get more serious, and child exploitation material cases raise their own “exceptional circumstances” question on top of it. If that is your situation, our explainer on exceptional circumstances and recorded convictions in CEM cases goes into it properly.

If you have been charged and want to know whether a conviction is likely to be recorded, or what a conviction from years ago means for you now, get in touch for confidential advice. You can also read about how we defend property offences and drug charges.

This article is general legal information, not advice about your situation.

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