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A 50-year-old Dunedin
bus driver is incensed after his passenger-class licence was suspended by
Land Transport New Zealand for a conviction he received 34 years ago. Dunedin Passenger
Transport bus driver Lloyd Walsh returned from his summer holiday yesterday
to find a letter from Land Transport New Zealand saying due to the
conviction, his licence would be suspended and he would have no right of
appeal. Mr Walsh said he had
been a driver with Dunedin Passenger Transport for the past three years and
the suspension effectively ended his 29-year career. The suspension was
unfair on several levels, he said. Thirty-four years ago,
when I was 16, I had a girlfriend I had been seeing for about a year. We
slept together two days before her 16th birthday but when her parents found
out, I was charged with and convicted of carnal knowledge. I was sentenced to
two months in a detention centre. It would be a different
story if it was rape. But because it was consensual and it was 34 years ago,
I think it’s a bit on the nose. It’s ridiculous. I paid
for it 34 years ago, so why am I being punished again. Mr Walsh said he
trained as a bus driver when he was 21. When it came time for final approval
for his licence, the Ministry of Transport gave him a two-month probationary
P endorsement and would continue to renew it if he kept his nose clean. I’ve kept my nose clean
since and they’ve kept renewing my licence until now, he said. If it was good
enough for them to give me a P endorsement then, why isn’t it good enough
now. Land Transport New
Zealand media manager Andy Knackstedt said 36,000 drivers with P endorsements
nationwide had had their backgrounds examined in a bid to clear the
transportation industry of people who had been convicted of serious crimes. Mr Walsh was one of 400
drivers who had received letters last week, informing them their P
endorsement licence would be suspended when the Land Transport Amendment Act
took effect next Monday. Mr Knackstedt said
under the old legislation, no-one could be automatically banned from holding
or applying for a passengerclass endorsement based on previous convictions. However, the new
legislation prohibited a person from holding a P endorsement if they were
convicted of offences such as murder, sexual offences and serious violent
offences. It had become necessary to implement the legislation because under
the old legislation, every applicant had to be processed on his or her own
merit, he said. If you turned up to
apply for a passenger licence and you were a serial killer, we couldn’t
automatically say no to you getting a licence. Dunedin Passenger
Transport operations manager Phil Boel said he had no hesitations about
employing Mr Walsh. It’s diabolical. It’s
ruined a whole man’s life from something he did when he was a kid. He’s been a valued
employee, reliable and he’s great with the passengers. He’s a normal,
everyday working man trying to do his job the best he can. Mr Walsh said his
foreseeable future was grim but hoped the wheels would keep on turning. He
would now take the matter to his local Members of Parliament and the
Amalgamated Workers Union in the hope the suspension could be overturned. After that, I honestly
don’t know what I’ll do. I have no other career to go to and being 50 years
old means job prospects are pretty slim. |
