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Bus and taxi drivers
are today meeting to discuss what they say is a nonsensical new law that will
cost many their jobs for "technical offences" committed decades
ago. Land Transport New
Zealand last week wrote to 285 drivers saying their P (passenger)
endorsement licences would be suspended when the Land Transport Amendment Act
takes effect next Monday. Stories have emerged of
people losing their licences for decades-old crimes. A Dunedin bus driver's
licence is being suspended because as a 16-year-old 34 years ago, he slept
with his 15-year-old girlfriend, two days short of her 16th birthday. Bus and Coach
Association deputy executive Dave Smith today said the group would today meet
the Taxi Federation to decide on a plan to voice its disapproval to the
Government. The association was
planning to create a list of affected members, including whether the offences
were "technical" with consensual sexual activity between two young
people close in age. "From what we can
gather there are even people there who have actually married the person
concerned and they've been happily married for many years, only to find that
hubby loses his job because of an infraction committed with wife, which
strikes us as bizarre," he said. At this stage, Mr Smith
did not know how many drivers were affected. "If there are 400
holders of P licences, a good number of them are going to be bus
drivers." He said if there were genuine
serious offences, the drivers should lose their licences, but the law had
gone too far in leaving no right of appeal. "It's said that
for every sexual offence under the Crimes Act for which there is a seven-year
(maximum) penalty, there really is no appeal against it." But Mr Smith said far
from all the affected people receiving seven years in jail, many would have
had no more than a "slap over the wrist" from the courts,
recognising the low-level of the offending. He had personally been
a criminal lawyer and in the 1970s he had seen the courts deal with many such
cases with very small penalties. The matter could be
easily remedied by the Government if it modified the legislation to allow
appeals -- as it did from people convicted of attempted murder, serious
assaults, and even people who had tried to procure a contract killer. As well as the fact
drivers were losing their licences, the fact they had only been written to
last week gave them an incredibly short notice period before next Monday, Mr
Smith said. |
