Zealand. MP Venn Young introduced a bill, entitled the Crimes Amendment Bill, in July 1974, which was the first bill to propose decriminalising homosexual acts between consenting adults. It was unsuccessful and was criticised by gay rights organisations for setting the age of consent at 21, as opposed to the age of 16 for heterosexual acts. Gay rights organisations refused to support bills which did not present an equal age of consent. A similar bill, introduced by MP Warren Freer in 1979, failed in its parliamentary reading in 1980, due to lack of support for the same reasons over the age disparity. In 1985, Labour MP Fran Wilde consulted with gay rights groups to develop the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, which she introduced to Parliament on 8 March. It proposed removing the offence of consensual sex between males over the age of sixteen. Over the course of 14 months, the bill attracted organised opposition outside Parliament, including an anti-reform petition (which was rejected by Parliament). Inside Parliament, multiple attempts to raise the age of consent to 18 were rejected. The bill passed its final reading on 9 July 1986, 49 votes in favour to 44 opposed. It achieved royal assent (becoming the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986) on 11 July 1986, and it came into effect on 8 August that year. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and (implicitly) gender identity was outlawed several years later by the Human Rights Act 1993. Expungement of convictions Individuals convicted and imprisoned for homosexual offences prior to August 1986 were not automatically eligible to hide the offences under the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004, since the Act applies retrospectively to current and abolished offences equally. However, individuals with an otherwise clean criminal record could apply to a District Court to have the conviction disregarded. However, this process only concealed these convictions – it did not erase them altogether. On 28 June 2017, the Government introduced a bill which would allow men convicted for homosexual offences to apply to wipe out their convictions from the records. On 6 July, the bill had its first reading. Justice Minister Amy Adams moved a motion to apologise for convictions the same day, to which Parliament agreed unanimously. The bill was passed by Parliament on 3 April 2018 and received royal assent on 9 April 2018, becoming the Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual